In late 1896, Prince Prisdang left everything behind without looking back at his past failures. He headed to Sri Lanka, a British colony, with a strong desire to devote the rest of his life to religion. He was ordained at the “Rajaguru Sri Subhuti Maha Vihara” temple, an important temple of the Amarapura sect, and was given the title “Phra Chinnaworawong”. At that time, Sri Lankan Buddhism was divided into different sects, so Phra Chinnaworawong found his new mission: to unite the three sects under the religious leadership of a monarch who was a Buddhist and also the leader of the country that maintained its independence, which was the only one, King Chulalongkorn of Siam, Thailand. Phra Chinnaworawong pushed Sri Lankan Buddhists to submit a petition to King Chulalongkorn, who was about to pass through Sri Lanka on his first European tour in April 1897, and he was the head of the preparations for a grand reception befitting his majesty. Unfortunately, the attempt to unite the Sri Lankan Sangha under the patronage of Siam failed. Due to the incident that caused King Rama V to lose his honor when he traveled to pay homage to the Buddha's tooth relic at the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in Kandy, even though there was a chaotic incident at the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, the reception of King Rama V at that time was very pleasing to the King. One reason was that Phra Chinnaworawong helped organize a meeting of the Buddhist community in Sri Lanka to gather to welcome him with proper honor. For this reason, King Rama V had the idea to have Phra Chinnaworawong return to help the Sangha with Krommaun Vajirananavarorasa, the abbot of Wat Bowonniwet Vihara, the leader of the Thammayut sect, which was a good sign of the healing of the rift between the Prince and the King of Siam. Before returning to Siam, Phra Chinnaworawong had the opportunity to travel to important Buddhist sites in Sri Lanka, Burma, Nepal, and India. During the several months of his travel in India, Phra Chinnaworawong traveled north. Due to the news of the discovery of the Buddha’s relics in the area of ​​a large British landowner, “William Claxton Peppe” at “Piprahwa”, a small village in Uttar Pradesh, on the border of India and Nepal, even though Phra Chinnawong was the initiator and pushed for the offering of the relics to King Chulalongkorn until it was successful, but the delivery that was about to take place around February 1899, the recipient in the name of Siam was not him because King Chulalongkorn ordered Phraya Sukhumnaiwinit (Pan Sukhum), the governor of Nakhon Si Thammarat Province, to travel to receive it directly at Calcutta. Phra Chinnawong met with Phraya Sukhumnaiwinit (Pan Sukhum), the Siamese representative who had traveled to India to receive the relics. No one knew what the two talked about during that meeting, but it was about to become a bigger problem than anyone could have imagined and it was also a turning point for Phra Chinnawong’s life to sink deeper into disaster until the last day of his life. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Classic Horror - Madness Paranoia by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-... Artist: http://incompetech.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Constance - The Descent by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-... Artist: http://incompetech.com/