It should be noted that when an incarnated Lāma is the spiritual Head of a monastery there is generally a temporal Head to manage its affairs. Then we must not forget that Tibetan Buddhism has also its organized female hierarchy, on the highest steps of which are female Khutuktus and incarnated Abbesses, as well as lower gradations of nuns and novices, living together in their own convents. The rules of discipline for the whole Lāmistic hierarchy fill at least thirteen out of the 108 volumes of the Tibetan Canon (see p. 272). They do not differ materially from those of other Buddhist countries. The 253 rules of the Pratimoksha-sūtra (see p. 62) are said to contain commands and prohibitions relating to five sides of the monastic life—conduct, dress, food, habitation, and occupation. It must be borne in mind that early Lāmism, like true Buddhism, had properly no secular priesthood and encouraged no intercourse with the outer world, except for the reception of alms and food from the laity. All grades of the hierarchy were supposed to live together as one celibate fraternity in monastic seclusion, apart from mundane associations. Their only duties were to meditate, recite the Law, and obey certain strict rules of discipline. This strictness of discipline, however, was not long borne with equal patience by the whole fraternity. It soon became irksome to a large section, and the same state of things which arose in early Buddhism and generally arises in all religious communities, occurred in Lāmism. The fraternity of Lāmas became split up into two chief parties or sects—the strict and the lax. We shall see in the end that these two sects were distinguished from each other by the colour of their garments, and especially of their caps, the former adopting yellow and calling themselves Gelug pa or Galdan pa, the latter adopting red (Shamār). Of course the lax or Red-cap sect soon infringed the rule in regard to celibacy, and allowed the marriage of monks under certain conditions, though such marriages seem at first to have been exceptional. It is said, indeed, that in Nepāl, under modern Gorkha rule, the celibate occupies a lower position than the married monk, to whom the services in the temples are committed. It is said, too, that the Lāmas of Sikkim and other northern countries constantly have children living with them, though they do not admit them to be their own (p. 152). Yet, for all that, celibacy is the rule, and nominally, at any rate, the great majority of Lāmistic monks in Eastern Asia are unmarried cœnobites, who live together in monasteries. Certainly in no other country in the world are monasteries so numerous or on so vast a scale as in Tibet and Mongolia (see p. 426).