were many solitaries endeavouring to gain perfection or exhibit it, in types more conform to Nebuchadnezzar in his madness or the demoniacs who had their dwellings in the tombs. Buddha condemned uncleanliness in all its forms. The robes which he enjoined his monks to wear may have been made up of rags picked up from a dunghill or from a cemetery, but they were scrupulously washed, properly dyed, and carefully mended. The ground all round the vihara, as well as its floors within, had to be swept every day, and its every item of furniture had to be punctually dusted and garnished. His monks were Pharisees in regard to the washing of hands and bowls and other utensils, and they anticipated our modern demand for proper ventilation.[[289]] A Buddhist mendicant of the days of King Asoka might prove a good model of personal neatness and domestic tidiness for many a Christian minister in these days of Queen Victoria. He belonged to an Order originally founded by a man who was in every sense a gentleman, and which for long numbered among its members many noble and even princely men. Inheriting their instincts, he stoutly maintained their traditions, that “neither plaited hair, nor dirt, nor lying on the earth, nor rubbing with dust, can purify a mortal who has not overcome desires”; “that he who, though well dressed, exercises tranquillity, is quiet, subdued, restrained, chaste, and has ceased to find fault with all other beings, he is indeed a Brahmana, a Sramana, a Bikkhu.”[[290]]
Again, in these old pictures of Buddhist Sangha life, there is no reflection of that insane passion for suffering which marked the gaunt and self-mutilated Yogis around them, and which also distinguished many of the ascetics of Christendom. The flagellations, and lacerations, and macerations which at one time became popular in European monasteries, and which made even a man like the founder of the Franciscan Order refuse food and sleep for days together, spend whole nights in winter up to the neck in snow or water, put ashes in the meals which had been cooked for him, would not for an hour have been tolerated; yea, they would have been laughed out of the world by Buddha and his monks. Wherever they went, they encountered grievous companies of
“Eyeless and tongueless, sexless, crippled, deaf:
The body by the mind being thus stripped
For glory of much suffering, and the bliss
Which they shall win,”[[291]]
but they never seem to have been tempted to give way to this intoxication which was supposed to make men gods. Self-denial was essential, but severe austerities and bodily penance were strongly discouraged. “Blooming, well-fed, with healthy colour and skin,” is the description often given in the old texts of a model Bikkhu. Buddha, when first met by the Brahman sages after his illumination, surprised them by the serenity of his countenance, the purity and brightness of his complexion. Among the first salutations addressed to the brethren on their return from their wanderings was the question whether they had been well fed.[[292]] It is true some Buddhist saints might be found sitting for days in the burning sun, oblivious to its fiery torments, but these must have been exceptions, for there is no mistaking either the teaching or the life of Buddha himself. All these extravagant cruelties, by which men have abused or sought to destroy the most beautiful organism and the most perfect instrument which has ever been produced in this world, were by him regarded as foolish and dangerous, and as debasing as the sensualism which they sought to avoid.
Though we have hitherto referred to the Buddhist Order, it is hardly correct to think of it as just one community. Though theoretically the Sangha of Buddha was the ideal unit, practically it never became so. After his decease there was no central governing power to direct and inspire the whole organisation. The patriarchs, of whom a long succession is given, were not hierarchs in the Greek or Latin sense.[[293]] They were simply outstanding Arhats, the heroic defenders and apostles of the system. Primitive Buddhism was represented not by one but by many Sanghas, for each brother as he went forth became the centre of a new fraternity. Its original cultus was based on the idea that community of aim would suffice to gather the knots of people who lived near each other for mutual confession and instruction and discipline. So they continued a custom which had come down from their Vedic ancestors, who, in the four days of the lunar month, when the moon is new, or full, or half-way between the two, celebrated the fast preparatory to the offering of the intoxicating Soma. The Buddhists had neither fast, nor sacrifice, nor offering, nor any form of religious worship whatever, but in these days they gathered for careful examination of themselves in the light of the Prohibitions, for public confession one to another, and for discipline. For these weekly gatherings the manual of the Pâtimokkha or Disburdenment was composed, it is averred, by Buddha himself.[[294]] To this public catechising and purgation of the Roll all the brethren had to come; even a sick man was only excused when he could assure the assembly, through a sponsor, that he was clean of fault, and if no brother was available for this office the assembly had to adjourn to meet at his couch. Its president, who also summoned the brethren, was the monk of the longest standing among them. So far it seemed to anticipate our principle of Presbyterian parity, but, like Convocation, it was an exclusively ecclesiastical gathering, for neither nun, nor novice, nor layman was allowed to be present. Like our presbyteries when applying their privy censures, they expected to be “alone.” Then, when all were reverentially placed, in presence of no heart-searching God, but before one another, there was recited by the president the order of confessional, according to the rule that if there was no transgression there was no interruption, and silence indicated innocence.
First came the recitation of the gravest offences: the four Pârâgikâ renounced upon their admission, commission of any one of which involved expulsion from the Order. Then came the list of the less serious transgressions—Samghâdisesas, involving temporary degradation, and lastly that of the Pâkittya, or venial faults, which were atoned for by simple confession. It was a lengthy, minute, ill-arranged form of inquisition, more comprehensive and rigid than any catechism of the confessional which Romanism ever devised.[[295]] It out-phariseed the Pharisees in its trivialities and repetitions and straining out of gnats, and no manual of the cloister ever discovered, could equal its disgusting details of every conceivable form of unnatural vice supposed to be perpetrable by the brethren.[[296]] It reads more like a suggestion to sin than a defence against temptation. We can understand from it alone, how impossible it was for Buddhism to live up to its true principles, how incapable it was of urging on the steady moral progress of the race, and of even realising the example of its founder. Life’s whole strength was wasted in watching against petty and artificial transgressions, so that none was available for the prosecution of real duty. Yet if deliverance was to come by the law, the most trivial details of action had to be tried; but here, as elsewhere, by the law was only the knowledge of sin, and that not as an offence against an infinitely Holy One, but only as a misfortune, or at worst an imprudence, a stumbling-block placed by man himself in the way of advancing his interest.
At the close of the rainy season, when the brethren were making ready for their wanderings, another solemn conference for self-purgation was held. In this exercise of the Pâvârana or Invitation no one known to be under the burden of scandal could take part, but all who were consciously clean, from the oldest to the youngest, invited the brethren to name any offence which during their common retreat they might have noted in their conduct. “I invite, venerable ones, the Order; if ye have seen anything offensive on my part, or have heard anything, or have any suspicion about me, have pity upon me, and name it. If I see it, I will make amends.”[[297]] It may be asked whether such an institution as this could ever have flourished in Christendom, although the purest of our Churches might adopt it with profit. These Buddhist brethren could not pray the one for the other, but they could confess their faults one to another by a simpler and more effective method than has ever been attempted by the confessional. That institution in Christendom has tended more to corrupt and degrade than to purify and elevate society, for it has interfered with the divinely instituted and much more ancient confessional of home. In its secrecy, sealed by affection to father or mother, or brother or sister, can be told out the things that burn within; and no priest or ecclesiastic can usurp this parental or brotherly function without injuring what they must earnestly desire to protect. This confessional, however, of the one to the whole little brotherhood, making them watch for and consider one another, must have tended to mutual edification. It seems of all the observances of the Sangha to have most nearly realised one great purpose of the Church, that of being helpful to each other’s salvation. St. Paul and St. James would have felt at home in such a conference. They would probably have warned the brethren against judging one another, and they would have instructed them that only One whose knowledge is perfect, because His love is infinite, could try the lives of men; but they would have commended them for this honest endeavour to fulfil one of the precepts of the perfect law of liberty: “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye who are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.”