Chapter 1. The formation of the saṅgha and the vinaya¶

Essay 1 briefly described the Buddha and his teaching. From the present essay onward, the account turns to the period after his death. We must first explain the organization he left behind, the saṅgha, and the rules that held it together, the vinaya. Chapter 1.4 called the saṅgha the Buddha's most important invention. Buddhism's survival for more than two thousand years after its founder's death owes much to its form of organization. The present chapter examines how it formed and operated.

We should first consider the nature of the sources. The Vinaya Piṭaka is among the best bodies of evidence for the social history of early Buddhism. Its incidental accounts of how monks ate, dressed, lived, and traveled, handled money and goods, and came into conflict bring it closer to everyday life than the more doctrinal Sutta Piṭaka. Yet it too is a text compiled and idealized by later generations. Each rule appears in the form "a certain monk did something, and the Buddha therefore laid down this rule." The pattern of one incident producing one rule is a narrative formula, and an actual incident need not lie behind every rule.¹ The inference drawn in the present book is that disciplinary rules accumulated gradually over a long period, while the systematic code was a later compilation.

1. The formation and membership of the saṅgha¶

Buddhists in the broad sense comprise the "four assemblies": monks (bhikkhu), nuns (bhikkhunī), male lay followers (upāsaka), and female lay followers (upāsikā). In the strict sense, however, "saṅgha" refers to the communities of ordained monks and nuns.

Monastic life followed the pattern of the renunciants discussed in 1.3. They shaved their heads, wore robes made from discarded cloth, begged for food, held no private property, remained celibate, and wandered as circumstances allowed. The Buddha organized an otherwise loose way of life by giving the wanderers shared rules, rituals, and procedures for deliberation. The assembled community had a system that could sustain it, which distinguished the saṅgha from the mere companionship of people practicing together.

Changes in the form of ordination

The saṅgha began with five ascetics at the Deer Park (Isipatana, present-day Sarnath). Known as the "group of five monks" (pañcavaggiya), they were, according to tradition, the first people the Buddha converted after setting the wheel of the teaching in motion. The Mahāvagga of the Vinaya records an extremely simple initial form of ordination. The Buddha said, "Come, monk. The teaching has been well proclaimed, and the holy life may be practiced," and the person became a monk.² Ordination by "Come, monk" (ehi bhikkhu) depended on the Buddha's personal acceptance. It required neither a ceremony nor any collective involvement.

As the number of converts grew, the arrangement became difficult to sustain. The Vinaya records several changes in the ordination procedure. First, disciples were allowed to ordain others on the Buddha's behalf. Ordination by the "three refuges" was then introduced, with refuge in the Buddha, teaching, and saṅgha declared three times. Finally, authority to ordain passed entirely to the saṅgha, acting collectively through a formal communal procedure.² The sequence deserves attention. Authority moved from "personal recognition by the Buddha" to "the procedure of the saṅgha." It was a central step in institutionalization, and a prerequisite for putting the later instruction to take "the teaching and discipline as teacher" into practice.

The pace of growth and the social composition

The saṅgha grew quite rapidly during the Buddha's lifetime. According to the Vinaya, the Buddha sent monks in all directions to teach at the end of the first rains retreat. Sāriputta and Moggallāna subsequently joined with several hundred followers, while lay support increased after King Bimbisāra donated the Bamboo Grove monastery. We may infer that fully ordained monks numbered several hundred or more by the Buddha's later years. Vinaya descriptions of "a thousand" may not be exact, but they probably convey the broad scale correctly.

Members came from a wide range of social backgrounds. Mahākassapa, Sāriputta, and Moggallāna were born into brahmin families, while Ānanda and Anuruddha belonged to the kṣatriya class. Upāli had been a barber before ordination, a status below both brahmins and kṣatriyas, yet became an authority on discipline and led the recitation of the Vinaya at the First Council. Such membership was consistent with contemporary renunciant traditions. Shaving the head meant giving up the outward signs of caste, and everyone was formally alike.

The present book cautions against an overly optimistic assessment of such equality. Scattered details in the Vinaya show that monks born into higher castes received favorable treatment in practice or were allowed to retain some of their earlier habits. In answering disciples' questions about caste status, the Buddha emphasized equality on the path to liberation, but did not systematically reject the caste order. Caste did not disappear within the saṅgha. Its formal expression was weakened, while its substance remained.³

2. From wandering to settlement, the rains retreat and the emergence of monasteries¶

The earliest saṅgha probably consisted almost entirely of wandering mendicants without a fixed home. The rainy season brought them together in one place.

During India's three rainy months, roads became muddy and insects and new plant life appeared everywhere. Travel was inconvenient, risked trampling living things, and attracted criticism from laypeople. The "rains retreat" (vassa) developed in response. Monastics stayed in one place for the three months of the rains and ceased wandering. Retreats required lodging, so lay followers donated gardens and buildings. Famous early examples include King Bimbisāra's gift of the Bamboo Grove outside Rājagaha and the elder Anāthapiṇḍika's gift of Jeta's Grove at Sāvatthī, known as Jeta's Grove, Anāthapiṇḍika's Park.⁴ What appeared to be a seasonal arrangement had far-reaching consequences.

We may infer that settlement gradually turned a wandering group into an institution with buildings, land, and eventually a permanent economic base. The development connects directly with the urbanization, commercial wealth, and lay support discussed in 1.1. A settled saṅgha became possible only with the support of wealthy urban donors. A question introduced here will receive separate treatment in Volume 3. What tensions arose once monastic property and the saṅgha's economy had grown large?

3. The formation of the vinaya¶

The core of the discipline is a collection of rules called the pātimokkha (Sanskrit prātimokṣa). The Vinaya Piṭaka is organized around it in three broad divisions:

The rules were not issued all at once. They were added one by one as the saṅgha grew and new situations arose, a process disclosed by the Vinaya's own pattern of one incident producing one rule. More direct evidence comes from the disciplinary codes transmitted by different schools. They share a core but differ in details and in their totals, including 227 rules for Theravāda monks, 250 for the Dharmaguptaka, and 248 for the Mūlasarvāstivāda, with 258 in its Tibetan version.⁵ Approximately six complete Vinayas survive:

The position taken in the present book is that the shared core of the Vinayas is early and common to the schools. Their differing details were compiled separately and became fixed later. The coexistence of several Vinayas is itself a surviving trace of the early saṅgha's expansion and differentiation, leading directly to the divisions discussed in the following two chapters.

4. The pātimokkha and uposatha, how discipline worked¶

The pātimokkha rules classify offenses by severity and prescribe different responses. The rules for Theravāda monks provide an example:

The four pārājika rules set a boundary beyond which a monk is expelled, and all schools agree on that point. Discipline was maintained through uposatha, a ritual held fortnightly. At each new and full moon, monks within the same boundary assembled and recited the pātimokkha together. When a rule was recited, anyone who had broken it had to disclose the offense and confess before the assembly. Silence signified purity.⁶ At the end of the rains retreat, a further ceremony called "invitation" (pavāraṇā) took place. Each monk asked his companions to identify any fault they had seen, heard of, or suspected in him, and accepted their criticism. The two regular forms of self-examination tied purity of discipline to harmony within the saṅgha.

5. Formal communal acts and consensus in a community without a head¶

The saṅgha conducted its affairs through saṅghakamma, its formal acts of deliberation. Ordination, uposatha, the rains retreat, disciplinary measures, and distribution of goods required an assembly with a quorum within a defined boundary (sīmā), following fixed procedures for approval. Usually a motion was announced and consent was sought three times. The motion passed if no one objected, with silence counting as consent. Full ordination (upasampadā) followed the same procedure.

The procedure is recognizable from another setting. Scholars infer a close resemblance to deliberation in the contemporary tribal republics (gaṇa-saṅgha, see Chapters 1 and 4). Assemblies, motions, quorums, and decisions by consensus or vote were common to both. Even the word "saṅgha" came from political and guild organizations of that kind.⁷ The Buddha adapted the governance of the republics of his homeland into the rules of a religious community.

The most consequential point was that the Buddha did not name a successor. The Mahāparinibbāna Sutta in the Dīgha Nikāya records his final instruction that, after his death, the teaching and discipline he had taught were to serve as teacher.⁸ The saṅgha was thereafter governed by "teaching and discipline" together with formal communal procedures, without a supreme religious head or central ecclesiastical authority. Decentralization had effects in both directions. It made Buddhism resilient, since the destruction of a local saṅgha could not destroy the whole, echoing the dispersed preservation of oral transmission discussed in 1.4. Yet no central authority could settle disagreements. Once local communities diverged in discipline or views, no one could force them back into agreement. The arrangement supplied the institutional conditions for later differentiation into schools.

The same discourse introduces another unresolved matter. The Buddha said that the saṅgha could abandon the "minor and lesser rules" if it wished. He did not specify which rules counted, and Ānanda did not ask.⁸ At the First Council, disagreement led the monks to retain every rule rather than abandon any. The next chapter returns to the unresolved question in its account of the councils.

6. Dependence, the bond between teacher and disciple¶

Formal communal acts governed collective procedures, while everyday monastic life relied on a parallel set of relationships under the system of dependence (nissaya).

A newly ordained monk had to "live in dependence" on a senior monk. The senior monk was called the upajjhāya, or preceptor, with an ācariya, a teacher of proper conduct, assisting him. Dependence usually lasted five years, during which daily conduct, doctrinal study, and training in ritual were supervised by the preceptor. A new monk had to report to his preceptor every day, notify him before traveling, and consult him on major matters.⁶

The arrangement served two purposes. First, it transmitted knowledge and practice. After the Buddha's death, doctrine and discipline were preserved by oral recitation, as the next chapter explains. The main setting for recitation was the relationship between teacher and disciple, and the preceptor was responsible for ensuring that disciples memorized scripture and mastered ritual. Second, it provided discipline and accountability. A preceptor shared responsibility for his disciple's conduct and could be questioned if the disciple broke a rule. A disciple who discovered misconduct by his preceptor likewise had a duty to remonstrate with him.

The saṅgha thus operated through two systems of governance. Formal communal acts dealt with collective affairs, using the boundary as their unit and procedure as their standard. Dependence dealt with the daily transmission of knowledge and enforcement of discipline through personal relationships. The systems did not always work smoothly together. A preceptor's misconduct, or a doctrinal disagreement between teacher and disciple, could produce tension between them. Such tensions repeatedly appeared on a larger scale in the later differentiation of schools.

7. The community of nuns¶

Chapter 1.4 briefly discussed the founding of the bhikkhunī saṅgha. According to the story, the Buddha's maternal aunt Mahāpajāpatī asked for ordination. He repeatedly refused before permitting it on condition that the nuns observe the "eight principles of respect." As already explained, the literary form of the repeated refusals and eight principles suggests a later insertion.⁷ Institutionally, nuns had more rules than monks, 311 in the Theravāda, and the eight principles placed them in structural subordination to the monks' community.⁶

The difficulty the nuns' community faced under the Vinaya needs explanation because it illustrates the subject of the present chapter. Under the Vinaya, full ordination of a nun requires "both communities." The nuns' community ordains her first, followed by confirmation from the monks' community, and a quorum from each is indispensable. The requirement contains a deadlock. If a local ordination lineage of nuns disappears entirely, no nuns' community can be assembled to ordain new nuns in accordance with the Vinaya. The broken lineage cannot renew itself. The vulnerability resembles the loss of reciters discussed in the preceding chapter. Oral transmission depends on a continuing succession of reciters, while disciplinary transmission depends on a continuing succession of ordained monastics. The Theravāda lineage of nuns ended in Sri Lanka around the eleventh century. For roughly nine hundred years afterward, the southern tradition, strictly speaking, had no bhikkhunīs.

The difference in Chinese monastic discipline also needs a brief explanation (see the six Vinayas in Section 3). The Chinese tradition follows the Dharmaguptaka Four-Part Vinaya, a separate transmission from the Pāli Vinaya of the southern tradition and the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya of the Tibetan tradition. The lineage of nuns in China has continued without interruption. Historical accounts record that its full establishment received help from Sri Lankan nuns who crossed the sea in the fifth century. Contemporary attempts to revive the southern bhikkhunī lineage, including the 1998 ordination at Bodhgayā, therefore brought in nuns from the Chinese Dharmaguptaka tradition to supply the nuns' half of the dual community, ordaining together with southern monks. The controversy follows from that arrangement. Conservative Theravādins consider ordination across different schools and Vinayas invalid, and monastic authorities in Thailand, Myanmar, and other places still largely withhold recognition. Reform advocates do not base their argument on "the common origin of the Vinayas." They argue from the Theravāda Vinaya itself. Anālayo observes that the sixth principle of respect requires female candidates to seek full ordination from both communities. It is a rule imposed on candidates, rather than a rule governing what monks may do, so it does not forbid monks from conferring ordination. When Mahāpajāpatī's followers sought ordination, the Buddha entrusted the task to monks, providing a precedent within the Vinaya. Anālayo therefore offers a dilemma. If the Chinese nuns invited to Bodhgayā counted, both communities were present. If they did not count, no nuns' community capable of ordaining southern female candidates existed at the time, making the subsequent ceremony performed by southern monks alone valid under the Vinaya. Both routes lead to the same conclusion that the combination of ceremonies in 1998 complied with the discipline.⁹ The present book does not adjudicate the dispute within the religion. It identifies a sharp practical consequence of the coexistence of several Vinayas with separate ordination lineages, discussed in Chapters 1 and 3. The question will recur in the chapters on the southern and Chinese traditions and on modern developments.

We have now explained the organization of the saṅgha, the origins and operation of its discipline, and its decentralized governance. The next chapter turns to the first major event after the Buddha's death, the communal collection of scripture. It asks how the orally preserved teachings and rules were recited together and established, and how the first disagreements appeared.

References¶