The time for discovering the worth of woman had not come in Buddha’s age, and we must remember his antecedents and surroundings before we condemn his estimate of or his relations to her. If the tradition be reliable, he prophesied, upon yielding to Ananda’s intercession, that because of women holy living would not long be preserved. They would prove in the fair field of his Order what “the disease of mildew proved to be in a field of rice.”[308] So though he admitted them to a separate branch of the Order, he placed them under very stringent regulations, and thoroughly under the tutelage of the monks. “A nun, though admitted a nun a hundred years ago, must bow reverentially before a monk, though only admitted to-day.” She must not pass the rainy season in a district in which monks were not residing; she must report herself twice a month to the Sangha for confession and instruction; she must give the Pavâranâ invitation, and she must, if guilty of offence, atone for it before both monks and nuns. She could only be admitted after a two years’ novitiate; under no circumstances must she revile or rebuke a monk; yea, on no occasion whatever must she charge him with any offence.[309] Between them and the superior sex the strictest separation was maintained from the first. The brother who was to teach and exhort them was never allowed to enter their nunnery, unless a sister was very ill. For a monk to journey alone with a nun, to cross a river in the same boat with one, to sit alone with a nun, with or without witnesses, was a very grave offence.[310] In short, in the Buddhist Sangha women were only tolerated at the best, and they were very severely guarded and restrained, as creatures not at all calculated to influence any one for good, and who could only be prevented or tamed from doing mischief or harm.[311]