We have learnt, then, that Buddhist monks were not under irrevocable vows. They undertook to obey rules of discipline, but took no actual vows—not even of obedience to a superior. Buddhist monkhood was purely voluntary, so that all were free to come and go. It had nothing hereditary about it like the rank of a Brāhman. We have also learnt, that the term ‘priest’ is not suitably applied to Buddhist monks. For true Buddhism has no ecclesiastical hierarchy, no clergy, no priestly ordination; no divine revelation, no ceremonial rites, no prayer, no worship in the proper sense of these terms. Each man was a priest to himself in so far as he depended on himself alone for internal sanctification. Evidently, too, all Buddhist monks were integral parts of one organic whole. It is true that in the end they were collected in various monasteries, each of which practically became an independent Saṅgha (each under one Head). But in theory all were parts of one and the same brotherhood, which was republican and communistic in its constitution. And this word Saṅgha cannot be correctly rendered by ‘church,’ if by that term is meant an ecclesiastical body with legislative functions, embracing clergy and _laity_ united in a common faith and under one Head; for as founded by the Buddha, it was not this. It was simply a vast fraternity intended to embrace all monks of the four quarters (ćaturdiṡa) of the world, from the Buddha himself and the perfected Arhat (p. 133), to every monk of the lowest degree, but not a single layman. Indeed in its highest sense the Saṅgha comprised only true Nirvāṇa-seeking monks who had entered the paths of true sanctification (p. 132). And here observe that, notwithstanding the stigma attached to unmarried women in India, Gautama in the end permitted an Order of Nuns (Pāli Bhikkhunī) and female novices (Sāmaṇerī, p. 47). The Ćulla-vagga (X. I. 3) relates how women were indebted to the intercession of a monk, Gautama’s cousin Ānanda, for permission to form an Order, and how Mahā-prajāpatī, the Buddha’s nurse (p. 24), became the first nun; yet when Ānanda first asked: ‘How are we monks to behave when we see women?’ Gautama replied: ‘Don’t see them.’ ‘But if we should see them, what are we to do?’ ‘Don’t speak to them.’ ‘But if they speak to us, what then?’ ‘Let your thoughts be fixed in deep meditation’ (Sati upaṭṭhāpetabbā. Mahā-parin° V. 23). Clearly the Buddha was originally a misogynist as well as a misogamist, and wished his followers to be misogynists also. Even when he had been induced to admit the justice of the plea for women’s rights, he placed his nuns under the direction of monks. They could only be admitted by monks, and were subject to the male Order in all matters of discipline. They were under eight special obligations, one of which was to rise up in the presence of a monk, even if a novice.