“Then I beseech the Perfected One to consider how great a benefactress to the Order has been the Queen. She is sister to the mother of the Blessed One and at her breast was he nourished. I beseech and yet again beseech that they be admitted, for if it be possible that they thus make an end of sorrow shall not this be permitted?” Then said the Blessed One: “Hard is it to refuse and I cannot. If therefore these women will accept eight weighty regulations in addition to those accepted by the Order—eight weighty regulations making them subject to the Order, it shall be reckoned to them for ordination.” And when he had received the eight weighty regulations hard to be borne, for they set the oldest and most venerable of nuns below the youngest and least of the Order, Ananda went out to the Queen and told her all as she stood patiently with the wearied women. And when they heard the regulations sorrow passed from them as when the moon escaping from a cloud floats in pure radiance in pure air, and the Queen answered for Yashodara and for all those tender ones: “Reverend Ananda, as a woman young, beautiful, and loving to beautify herself, having obtained a wreath of blue lotus-flowers, or of perfumed jasmin, takes it and wreathes her head with joy, so do we. O venerable Ananda, we take up those eight weighty regulations, not to be transgressed while life lasts.” And that was their ordination, as the Exalted One had said, and Ananda returned to the Lord and told him of their joy. And he meditated and said: “If, Ananda, women had not retired to the homeless life, under my discipline then would religion have endured long in this country, even a thousand years. But now, not very long will the discipline and religion endure. And just as a man prudently builds a dike in order that water confined may not transgress its bounds, have I laid down the eight weighty regulations. Yet shall it not endure, since women have accepted the rules.” And true it is that in India the faith has not endured, but over the rest of Asia has it spread, strong and mighty. But the women were glad at heart, for the homeless life drew them with the very passion of peace and many became great saints, some dwelling in forests and in caves, and great to them was the joy of peace in the solitudes far from crowds, and they were filled with the life of trees and great forests and the strength of the up-running sap and the speechless communion and growth of trees and plants. And in many joy broke forth in words and they made the Psalms of the Sisters, even as their brothers the monks also sang for joy and could no more be silent than birds at dawn, and the world they had known called to ears that heard no longer. And thus it called: “Young art thou, sister, and faultless—what seekest _thou_ in the holy life? Cast off that yellow-hued raiment and come!” And each replied in her own manner.