Ambap[=a]li, whose conversation with Buddha and dinner-party to him forms a favorite story with the monks (Mah[=a]v. v. 30; Cull. ii).  The protection offered by Bimbis[=a]ra made the order a fine retreat for rogues.  In Mah[=a]v. 1. 41 ff. one reads that King Seniya Bimbis[=a]ra made a decree:  “No one is to do any harm to those ordained among the C[=a]kya-son’s monks.[42] Well taught is their doctrine.  Let them lead a holy life for the sake of complete extinction of suffering.”  But robbers and runaway slaves immediately took advantage of this decree, and by joining the order put the police at defiance.  Even debtors escaped, became monks, and mocked their creditors.  Buddha, therefore, made it a rule that no robber, runaway slave, or other person liable to arrest should be admitted into the order.  He ordained further that no son might join the order without his parents’ consent (ib. 54).  Still another motive of false disciples had to be combated.  The parents of Up[=a]li thought to themselves:  “What shalt we teach Up[=a]li that he may earn his living?  If we teach him writing his fingers will be sore; if we teach him arithmetic his mind will be sore; if we teach him money-changing his eyes will be sore.  There are those Buddhist monks; they live an easy life; they have enough to eat and shelter from the rain; we will make him a monk.”  Buddha, hearing of this, ordained that no one should be admitted into the order under twenty (with some exceptions).

The monks’ lives were simple.  They went out by day to beg, were locked in their cells at night (Mah[=a]v. i. 53), were probated for light offences, and expelled for very severe ones.[43] The people are represented as murmuring against the practices of the monks at first, till the latter were brought to more modest behavior.  It is perhaps only Buddhist animosity that makes the narrator say:  “They did not behave modestly at table....  Then the people murmured and said, ’These Buddhist monks make a riot at their meals, they act just like the Brahman priests.’” (Mah[=a]v. i. 25; cf. i. 70.)

We turn from the Discipline to the Sermons.  Here one finds everything, from moral exhortations to a book of Revelations.[44] Buddha sometimes is represented as entering upon a dramatic dialogue with those whom he wishes to reform, and the talk is narrated.  With what soft irony he questions, with what apparent simplicity he argues!  In the Tevijja[45] the scene opens with a young Brahman.  He is a pious and religious youth, and tells Buddha that although he yearns for ’union with Brahm[=a],’[46] he does not know which of the different paths proposed by Brahman priests lead to Brahm[=a].  Do they all lead to union with Brahm[=a]?  Buddha answers:  ’Let us see; has any one of these Brahmans ever seen Brahm[=a]?’ ‘No, indeed, Gautama.’  ’Or did any one of their ancestors ever see Brahm[=a]?’ ‘No, Gautama.’  ’Well, did the most ancient seers ever say that they knew