Though Gaudama had nothing to do with the redaction of the books under examination, he is, nevertheless, the author of the principal and most important regulations. It is in the Thoots or instructions he has delivered on different occasions that we must search for discovering the germ and origin of the principal points contained in the Patimauk and the Cambawa. At the conclusion of many of his instructions we find some hearers believing in him, and applying for admittance into the society of his disciples. When he approved of their dispositions, the applicants had but to renounce the ordinary pursuits of life, exchange their dress for the one regularly prescribed, and engage to live in a state of strict chastity: they then became at once members of the Thanga, without having to go through a prescribed ordeal. Faith in Buddha on the one hand, and on the other willingness to live in poverty and chastity, were the only requisites for obtaining admittance into the spiritual family of Buddha. The applicants were obliged to live in poverty, and depend for their food on the alms they could procure by begging. Hence they were called Bickus, or mendicants. They had to wear a dress made with rags picked up in cemeteries and stitched together. They placed themselves under the guidance of Gaudama, and denied to themselves all sensual gratifications. Such were the first and principal obligations imposed on the new converts who embraced a religious life. The Bickunies, or women who had embraced the holy profession, were gradually subjected to the same regulations. The minor details of the rule were introduced as consequences flowing from the general principles. This has been the work of time, and perhaps of one of the councils. It does not appear from the instructions of Gaudama that the steps of the hierarchy were defined and fixed by him, as they have subsequently been. We remark in the assembly, the Bickus, or mendicants, constituting the great mass of the religious, then the _Thera_, or, as the Burmans write it, _Mathera_, the ancients, or members of the assembly distinguished by their age and proficiency in learning and virtue, and the Aryias, or those who had made the greatest progress in meditation and contemplation, and had entered into the current of perfection.