The Religions of India: Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume 1, Edited by Morris JastrowHopkins, Edward Washburn
Religion
The Religions of India: Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume 1, Edited by Morris Jastrow
Hopkins, Edward Washburn
India -- Religion
of strife, quarrelsome, makers of dispute, given to idle talk, and
raisers of legal questions in the congregation.' Such were the
infamous followers of Panduka and Lohitaka. Of a different sort,
Epicurean or rather frivolous, were the adherents of Assaji and
Punabbasu, who, according to another chapter of the _Cullavagga_ (I.
13), 'cut flowers, planted cuttings of flowers, used ointment and
scents, danced, wore garlands, and revelled wickedly.' A list of the
amusements in which indulged these flighty monks includes 'games
played with six and ten pieces, tossing up, hopping over diagrams,
dice, jackstraws,[38] ball, sketching, racing, marbles, wrestling,'
etc; to which a like list (_Tevijja_, II) adds chess or checkers
('playing with a board of sixty-four squares or one hundred squares'),
ghost stories, and unseemly wrangling in regard to belief ("I am
orthodox, you are heterodox"), earning a living by prognostication, by
taking omens 'from a mirror' or otherwise, by quack medicines, and by
'pretending to understand the language of beasts.' It is gratifying to
learn that the scented offenders described in the first-mentioned work
were banished from the order. According to the regular procedure, they
were first warned, then reminded, then charged; then the matter was
laid before the congregation, and they were obliged to leave the
order. Even the detail of Subhadda's insolence is not wanting in these
records _(Cull_. XI. 1. and elsewhere). No sooner was Buddha dead than
the traitor Subhadda cries out: "We are well rid of him; he gave us
too many rules. Now we may do as we like." On which the assembly
proceeded to declare in force all the rules that Buddha had given,
although he had left it to them to discard them when they would. The
Confessional (P[=a]timokkha), out of which have been evolved in
narrative form the Vinaya texts that contain it, concerns graded
offences, matters of expiation, rules regarding decency, directions
concerning robes, rugs, bowls, and other rather uninteresting topics,
all discussed in the form of a confession.[39] The church-reader goes
over the rules in the presence of the congregation, and asks at the
end of each section whether any one is guilty of having broken this
rule. If at the third repetition no one responds, he says, 'They are
declared innocent by their silence.' This was the first public
confessional, although, as we have shown above, the idea of a partial
remission of sin by means of confession to the priest is found in
Brahmanic literature.[40] The confession extends to very small
matters, but one sees from other texts that the early congregation
laid a great deal of weight on details, such as dress, as the sign of
a sober life. Thus in _Mah[=a]vagga_, V. 2 ff., certain Buddhists
dress in a worldly way. At one time one is informed of the color of
their heretical slippers, at another of the make of their wicked
gowns. All this is monastic, even in the discipline which 'sets back'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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