THE BUDDHA...............THE WORLD 547
Year. The Buddha Sasana Council and Buddhists of Burma are greatly overjoyed to know that millions of the country-men of the Buddha are now beginning to come back into the light enkindled by the Buddha with your leadership. We are confident that Buddha Sasan would be re-established in all parts of India.
I have, on my part, been able, in a small scale, to follow up what you have started, while in Burma during the third WFB Conference. On the 28th of last month about 5,000 Tamils formally accepted Buddhism in a very impressive ceremony held in the Chatta Sangayana Great Cave in the presence of Mahatheras. Cabinet Ministers and Buddhist leaders, many more of the Tamils in Rangoon and other parts of Burma are being aroused to follow your lead.
I owe you a good deal of explanation and thousands of apologies for not being able to write to you earlier. I have been very busy with the Chatta Sangayana work and other activities connected with the propagation of Buddhism abroad, particularly in Japan. You would perhaps be glad to learn I have been able to get a large number of influential Buddhist leaders in Japan to form a society for the establishment of Therawada Buddhism in Japan ; there centres are going to be set up by May 1957 with about 15 Mahatheras from Burma. Building constructions are already underway at Moji and Isoshira. A delegation from the Japanese Society is already here and is engaged in discussions with me from day-to-day since the 27th of last month.
As regards the contribution towards the cost of publication of your work on Buddhism, I did write to you earlier as I was not able to get aid from the Asia Foundation, because of the change of representative. The representative who had a talk with you while you were here was soon transferred to Manilla and the new representative does not seem to take much interest in matters of this kind. I was hoping that I would be able to do something about the matter, but I find there is no hope for it for some time to come.