These four laws are then repeated, and the penalty of excommunication, which attaches to a breach of any of them, is enunciated. The first of the four prohibits impure conduct; the second, theft. The third runs as follows:—
"If a Bhikshu cause a man's death, or hold a weapon and give it a man (for the purpose), or if he speak of the advantages of death, or if he carelessly exhort one to meet death (saying), 'Tush, you are a brave man,' or use such wicked speech as this, 'It is far better to die and not to live,' using such considerations as these, bringing every sort of expedient into use, praising death, exhorting to death: this Bhikshu ought to be excluded and cut off."
The fourth rule is against pretending to a perfect knowledge of the Truth which the Bhikshu does not in fact possess.
At the end of the recitation of these four rules it is declared that a brother who has transgressed any one of them "has acquired the guilt which demands exclusion, and ought not to live as a member of the priesthood." The question as to the purity of the Assembly is then again put, and the priest (after declaring it pure) proceeds to thirteen rules, the breach of which is punished by suspension. The first restrains a monk from pampering lustful thoughts, the second from bringing any part of his body in contact with that of a woman, the third from lewd talk with a woman, the fourth from obtaining a woman to minister to him. For a violation of this last injunction the highest penance, as well as suspension, is appointed. There follow rules against building a residence of illegal size, or without due consecration, or on an inconvenient site; against building a Vihâra on an inconvenient site; against slander of a Bhikshu (two rules), against causing disunion in a community, against forming a cabal for mutual protection against just censure, against disorderly conduct when living in a house, against a refusal to listen to expostulation or reproof. Solitary confinement, and six days of penance, are the penalties imposed on these offenses; after the infliction of the sentence absolution is to be given. Next we have two rules "not capable of exact definition," but relating to licentious talk with "a faithful laywoman." Thirty rules relating to priests' robes and the like matters are now recited. They seem to be aimed at covetousness in receiving or asking gifts. After the usual inquiry as to the purity of the brethren, ninety rules against offenses requiring "confession and absolution" are to be read. Some of these seem to be repetitions of previous ones belonging to a more serious category, as the first two, on lying and slander, and the eighth, against pretended knowledge. Then the Prâtimoksha proceeds to say that if a Bhikshu use hypocritical language, if he occupy the same lodging as a woman, or the same as a man not yet ordained above two nights, if he chant prayers with a man not yet ordained, if he rail at a priest, if he use water containing insects (so as to destroy life), if he give clothes to a Bhikshunî, or nun, if he go with a Bhikshunî in any boat except a ferry-boat, if he agree to walk with a Bhikshunî along the road, if he gambol in the water while bathing, if he drink distilled or fermented liquor, or commit any of the many other faults, partly against morality in general, partly against conventual rule, he is guilty of a transgression of this class. Four rules follow against receiving food from a nun, against allowing a nun in a layman's house to point out certain dishes, and have them given to certain monks; against going to dinner uninvited; against the omission on the part of a monk residing in a dangerous place to warn those who may bring him victuals of the risk they run. A hundred rules, mostly trifling, are now entered on. They are such as these: "Not to enter a layman's house in a bouncing manner." "Not to munch or make a munching noise in eating rice," and likewise, "not to make a lapping noise." "Not to clean the teeth under a pagoda;" with many other minute regulations on a multitude of trivial points. The seven concluding laws refer simply to the mode of deciding cases.
Subdivision 2.—The Sûtra-Pitaka.
We have thus concluded our notice of the Prâtimoksha Sûtra, and may pass on to the Sûtra-pitaka, the second of the three baskets into which the Canon is divided. Sûtra is a term signifying a discourse, or lecture, and the Sûtras of Buddhism are frequently moral stories, supposed to emanate from Gautama Buddha himself, and embodying the great features of his gospel, as the Sermon on the Mount and the Parables do those of the gospel of Jesus. A very interesting collection of such stories belonging to the Sûtra-pitaka is contained in a work translated from the Thibetan by a Russian scholar, and forming, under the title of the Hdsangs-blun, or the Wise Man and the Fool, a portion of the twenty-eighth volume of the Mdo, or Sûtra-pitaka. From Csoma's Analysis it appears that many other narratives of a similar nature are embodied in this section of the Canon, though much of it also consists of more direct dogmatic instruction. From "The Wise Man and the Fool" I select a chapter which affords a good illustration of the boundless charity which Buddhism inculcates.
The victoriously-perfect One was living at Srâvasti. When the time came to receive alms, he set out with his disciple Ananda, alms-bowl in hand, along the road. It so happened that he met two men who had been condemned to death for repeated robberies, and were being led to execution. Their mother, seeing the Buddha, thus addressed him:—"O chief of gods, think of us with mercy, and vouchsafe to take under thy protection these my sons who are going to execution." Buddha accordingly interceded with the king, who gave them a free pardon. Touched with gratitude, the two men asked leave to become monks, and on Buddha's consenting to receive them, their hair at once fell off from head and face, and their garments assumed the yellow hue of the order.[66] Both mother and sons attained high spiritual grades. Ananda marveled what good deeds these three could have performed to meet with the victoriously-perfect One, to be saved from such great evils, and to obtain the prospect of Nirvâna. Buddha thereupon informed him that this was not the first occasion on which he had saved their lives, and on Ananda's request for a further explanation, related the following circumstances. Countless years ago, there lived in Jambudwîpa (India) a certain king who had three sons. The youngest son was mild and merciful from his childhood upwards. One day, when the king, with his ministers, wives and sons, was at a picnic outside the town, the three sons went into a wood, where they found a tigress, with young recently littered, so nearly starved that she was almost on the point of devouring her own brood. The youngest asked his brothers what food a tigress would eat. "Newly-killed meat and warm blood." "Is there any one who would support its life with his own body?" "No one," replied the elder brothers; "that would be too difficult" (I give only the substance of this colloquy). Then the youngest prince thought within himself: "For a long time I have been driven about in the circle of births, and have thrown away my body and my life innumerable times; often have I sacrificed it for the passion of the desires, often for that of rage, often too for folly and ignorance; what value then has this body, which has not one single time trodden the field of meritorious actions for the sake of religion!" Meantime, all three had walked on; but the youngest, pleading some business of his own, desired them to go on, leaving him to follow. Having returned to the cave of the tigress, he laid himself down beside her, but found her too weak to open her mouth. Hereupon the prince contrived to bleed himself with a sharp splinter of wood, and the tigress, after licking the blood that flowed from him, was sufficiently refreshed to consume him altogether. The two elder brothers, wondering at his long absence, returned to the tiger's hole, where, on finding his remains, they rolled upon the ground and fainted, overcome with grief. The queen, who had had an alarming dream, questioned them anxiously on their return as to their brother, and she too on learning the sad event, which their choking voices for some time prevented them from telling, fell senseless to the ground. Soon after, both king and queen visited the den, but could find nothing but bones. Meantime, the prince had been born again in the Tushita heaven. Looking about to discover what good action of his had brought him to this place, he saw the bones of his former body in the tigress's den, and his parents sighing and groaning around them. He returned from his heavenly abode to give them some consolation and some good advice. They were at length somewhat comforted, and collecting his bones, buried them in a costly sarcophagus.
Buddha then turns to Ananda and asks him whom he supposes the actors in this tragedy to have been. He tells him, without waiting for an answer, that the king was his present father, the queen his present mother, the elder princes certain personages named Maitreya and Vasumitra, and the youngest prince no other than himself. The young tigers were, it need hardly be said, the condemned felons whom he had now again delivered from death.
While this anecdote inculcates charity in its fullest extent, the one which is now to be quoted illustrates another most conspicuous point in the ethics of Buddhism,—the regard paid by it to personal purity and the deadening influence it exercised on the senses. The translation of this curious legend is due to Burnouf:—
"There was at Mathurâ a courtesan called Vâsavadattâ. Her maid went one day to Upagupta to buy her some perfumes. Vâsavadattâ said to her on her return: 'It seems, my dear, that this perfumer pleases you, as you always buy from him.' The maid answered her: 'Daughter of my master, Upagupta, the son of the merchant, who is gifted with beauty, with talent, and with gentleness, passes his life in the observance of the law.' On hearing these words Vâsavadattâ conceived an affection for Upagupta, and at last she sent her maid to say to him: 'My intention is to go and find you; I wish to enjoy myself with you.' The maid delivered her message to Upagupta; but the young man told her to answer her mistress: 'My sister, it is not yet time for you to see me.' Now it was necessary in order to obtain the favors of Vâsavadattâ to give five hundred Purânas. Thus the courtezan imagined that [if he refused her, it was because] he could not give the five hundred Purânas. For this reason, she sent her maid to him again to say, 'I do not ask a single Kârchâpana from the son of my master; I only wish to enjoy myself with him.' The maid again delivered this new message, and Upagupta answered her in the same way: 'My sister, it is not time yet for you to see me.'