The Buddha’s regulations contain no vow of obedience or recognition of rank other than simple seniority or the relation of teacher to pupil.  As time went on various hierarchical expedients were invented in different countries, since the management of large bodies of men necessitates authority in some form, but except in Lamaism this authority has rarely taken the form familiar to us in the Roman and Oriental Churches, where the Bishops and higher clergy assume the right to direct both the belief and conduct of others.  In the Sangha, no monk could give orders to another:  he who disobeyed the precepts of the order ceased to be a member of it either ipso facto, or if he refused to comply with the expiation prescribed.  Also there was no compulsion, no suppression of discussion, no delegated power to explain or supplement the truth.  Hence differences of opinion in the Buddhist Church have largely taken the shape of schools of thought rather than of separate and polemical sects.  Dissension indeed has not been absent but of persecution, such as stains the annals of the Christian Church, there is hardly any record.  The fact that the Sangha, though nearly five hundred years older than any Christian institution, is still vigorous shows that this noble freedom is not unsuccessful as a practical policy.

The absence of anything that can be called worship or cultus in Gotama’s regulations is remarkable.  He not merely sets aside the older religious rites, such as prayer and sacrifice; he does not prescribe anything whatever which is in ordinary language a religious act.  For the Patimokkha, Pavarana, etc., are not religious ceremonies, but chapters of the order held with an ethical object, and the procedure (the proposal of a resolution and the request for an expression of opinion) is that adopted in modern public meetings, except that assent is signified by silence.  It is true that the ceremonial of a religion is not likely to develop during the life of the founder, for pious recollection and recitation of his utterances in the form of scripture are as yet impossible.  Still, if the Buddha had had any belief whatever in the edifying effect of ritual, he would not have failed to institute some ceremony, appealing if not to supernatural beings at least to human emotions.  Even the few observances which he did prescribe seem to be the result of suggestion from others and the only inference to be drawn is that he regarded every form of religious observance as entirely superfluous.

At first the Sangha consisted exclusively of men.  It was not until about five years after its establishment that the entreaties of the Buddha’s fostermother, who had become a widow, and of Ananda prevailed on him to throw it open to women as well[543] but it would seem that the permission was wrung from him against his judgment.  His reluctance was not due to a low estimate of female ability, for he recognized and made use of the influence of women in social and