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APRIL, 1908.]
THE BUDDHIST COUNCILS.
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know, that Buddha was rather " loquacious" and it is not impossible that Buddha himself and the Sangha, from its dawn and in the great trouble which followed upon the death of the Master, exerted itself to assure the Buddhist originality as compared with other sects.
And we must go further. The community, we have already said, comprises two classes of monks who took their refuge in the Buddha, the ära nyakabhikṣus, of whom Devadatta, father of the Dhūtāngas, was with Kaçyapn, the legendary patron;t and the bhikṣus who constitute the centre of the community and whose disciplinary organisation Baddha confided to Upāli.5
The divergepce of the views of the two groups could only hasten the codification of two sets of rules.
We possess these two sets of rules, and if it is difficult to fix their distant antecedents their history in Buddhism and their reciprocal relations, it is ensy to recognise the two tendencies which dominate them. On the one hand, the four "resources," or "points of support" (nissaya, nigraya) of the monastic life ; in the matter of food, the mouthfuls received as alms; as regards clothes, the robe consisting of rags ; for a house, the foot of a tree; for medicines, decomposed urine. And Budba declares that all the rest, meals in the town, clothes made on purpose, monastries and grottoes, ghí, butter or oil are snperfluities (atirekalabha), that is to say, if you like, dispensations (extra allowances). These are, for certain, derogations from cranulya.
On the other hand, - I have in view the role rather than the organisation of the fraternity - the P, ātimoksa itself, it seems, is only a translation of the essential axioms of Hindoo asceticism, but a translation much less integral. One is a gramanu only on the condition of conforming to the immemorial principles of chastity, of poverty, of temperance, of obedience Also, at least for the novices and within certain limits. But there is a way of understanding these principles. Now it seems indeed that the Prātimokṣa not only is unacquainted with the
Korn, Manual, p. 74: "In general it may be said that the whole organisation of the Sathghs and a good deal
rules for monks and nuns, if we may trust the canonical writings, were introduoed by imitation or by scoident. The Master is less a legislator than an upholder of the Law...."
+ See Sp. Hardy, Manual, p. 326 ; and above, p. 91, n. 49.
FR-hion relates that the disciples of Devadatta, bis contemporarios, bonour the three last but one Buddhas, but not Çakyamuni (Beal, p. 82, quoted by Rockhill, Udana, p. 204).
On the role of Upali see the texts (note Culla, VI. 13, 1) quoted in Vinaya Teets, I. pp. xii, and xiii. The documents which go even so far as to substitute Upah for Baddha in what concerns the promulgation of the Vinaya are as suggestive as the conclusion of the translators is prudeat: "There may well be some truth in this very ancient tradition that Upah was specially conversant with the Rules of the Order ; but it would be hazardous on that account to ascribe to Upali & share, not only in the banding down of existing rules, but in the composition of the Pâtimokkha itaelf."
6 The Nissaya are declared to all the monks immediately after ordination: if they were declared to them beforehand, no one would wish to be a monk!(M. Vagga, I. 30 ): they constitute the ideal of the ascetio life. The Bhikaus are free to follow or to slight the Dhulas. Among the Arhats of Vaigāli (Southern and Avanta kaa), some only, as we have seen, p. 82, n. 100, practise the dhūtās 8, 8, 1, 2. It is clear, however, saya M. Kern, that the six first dhütas have nothing special to the aranyakas.
The three first nissayas correspond to the Dhūtangas 2, 1, 9 of the Pali list. On these soo Kero, Man. p. 75. The women are Repasarily excluded from the nigraya.
Perhaps there is in fact & moro personal element in the organisation of the Saingha than in the role of iscipline
