Once on earth, a king built himself a royal palace symbolising the celestial
mountain of the Buddhist cosmology. In its inner sanctum was a tiered, canopied
throne and the king wore a tiered crown as a symbol of cosmological and
protective forces (Heine-Geldern 1942). Members of the court wore spectacular
forms of dress and regalia allocated to them according to sumptuary law that set
the style of dress, the type of fabrics used, and the value of the jewellery and
regalia, graded according to rank