LECTURE IV.
The Saṅgha or Buddhist Order of Monks.
Perhaps the first point made clear by the study of the Buddhist Scriptures is, that the Buddha never seriously thought of founding a new system in direct opposition to Brāhmanism and caste. Even his Order or fraternity of Monks, which attained a world-wide celebrity and spread through a great part of Asia, was a mere imitation of an institution already established in India. He himself was a Hindū of the Hindūs, and he remained a Hindū to the end. His very name, Gautama, connected him with one of the most celebrated Hindū sages, and was significant of his original connexion with orthodox Brāhmanism. It is true he was a determined opponent of all Brāhmanical sacerdotalism and ceremonialism, and of all theories about the supernatural character of the Vedas (see [p. 53]); but, being himself a Hindū, he never required his adherents to make any formal renunciation of Hindūism, as if they had been converted to an entirely new faith; just as, if I may say so with all reverence, the Founder of the Christian Church, being Himself a Jew, never required His followers to give up every Jewish usage.
Nor had the Buddha any idea of courting popularity as a champion of social equality and denouncer of all distinctions of rank and ancient traditions—a kind of Tribune of the people, whose mission was to protect them from the tyranny of the upper classes.
There was, no doubt, at one time a prevalent opinion among scholars that Gautama aimed at becoming a great social reformer. It was generally supposed that he began by posing before his fellow-countrymen in a somewhat ad captandum manner as a popular leader and liberator, whose mission was to deliver them from the tyranny of caste. But such an opinion is now known to be based on mistaken assumptions. What ought rather to be claimed for him is that he was the first to establish a universal brotherhood (Saṅgha) of cœnobite monks, open to all persons of all ranks. In other words, he was the first founder of what may be called a kind of universal monastic communism (for Buddhist monks never, as a rule, lived alone), and the first to affirm that true enlightenment—the knowledge of the highest path leading to saintship—was not confined to the Brāhmans, but open to all the members of all castes. This was the only sense in which he abolished caste. His true followers, however, constituted a caste of their own, distinguished from the laity. From the want of a more suitable term we are forced to call them ‘monks[35].’
And this Order of monks was not a hierarchy. It had no ecclesiastical organization under any centralized authority. Its first Head, Gautama, appointed no successor. It was not the depository of theological learning. Nor was it a mediatorial caste of priests, claiming to mediate between earth and heaven. It ought not to be called a Church, and it had no rite of ordination in the true sense. It was a brotherhood, in which all were under certain obligations of celibacy, moral restraint, fasting, poverty, itineration and confession to each other—all were dominated by one idea, and pledged to the propagation of the one doctrine, that all life was in itself misery, and to be got rid of by a long course of discipline, as not worth living, whether on earth or in heaven, whether in present or future bodies. The founding of a monastic brotherhood of this kind which made personal extinction its final aim, and might be co-extensive with the whole world, was the Buddha’s principal object.
In point of fact, the so-called enlightenment of mind which entitled him to Buddhahood, led him at the early stage of his career into no abstruse or transcendental region of thought, but took a very practical direction. It led him to see that an association of monks offering equality of condition to high and low, rich and poor, and a haven of refuge to all oppressed by the troubles of life, would soon become popular. His Order started with first ten, then fifty, then sixty original members (see [p. 45]), but its growth soon surpassed all anticipations, and its ramifications extended to distant countries, where, like the branches of the Indian fig-tree, they sent down roots to form vigorous independent plants, even after the decay of the parent stem. On this account it was called the fraternity of the four quarters (Ćātuddisa, Mahā-vagga VIII. 27. 5) of the globe.
In brief, a carefully regulated monastic brotherhood, which opened its arms to all comers of all ranks, and enforced on its members the duty of extending its boundaries by itinerancy, and by constantly rolling onward the wheel of the true doctrine (Law), constituted in its earliest days the very essence, the very backbone of Buddhism, without which it could never have been propagated, nor even have held its own.
But we repeat that in this, his main design, Gautama was after all no innovator; no introducer of novel ideas.
Monachism had always been a favourite adjunct of the Brāhminanical system, and respect for monastic life had taken deep root among the people. Thus we find it laid down in its most authoritative exponent, Manu’s Law-book (Book VI), that every twice-born man was bound to be first an unmarried student (Brahma-ćārī), next a married householder, and then at the end of a long life he was to abandon wife and family and become a Sannyāsī, ‘ascetic,’ or Bhikshu, ‘mendicant,’ wandering from door to door. In fact, it was through these very states of life that Gautama himself, as a Kshatriya, was theoretically bound to have passed.
Hindū monks, therefore, were numerous before Buddhism. They belonged to various sects, and took various vows of self-torture, of silence, of fasting, of poverty, of mendicancy, of celibacy, of abandoning caste, rank, wife and family. Accordingly they had various names. The Brāhman was called a Sannyāsī, ‘one who gives up the world.’ Others were called Vairāgī, ‘free from affections;’ Yogī, ‘seeking mystic union with the Deity;’ Dig-ambara, ‘sky-clothed,’ ‘naked;’ Tapasvī, ‘practising austerities;’ Yati, ‘restraining desires;’ Jitendriya, ‘conquering passions;’ Ṡramaṇa, ‘undergoing discipline;’ Bhikshu, ‘living by alms;’ Nirgrantha, ‘without ties.’ Such names prove that asceticism was an ancient institution. The peculiarity about Gautama’s teaching in regard to monachism was that he discouraged[36] solitary asceticism, severe austerities, and irrevocable vows, though he enjoined moral restraint in celibate fraternities, conformity to rules of discipline, upright conduct, and confession to each other.