and capable
matron Visakha down to the women of Burma in the present day. The Buddha
even praised the ancients because they married for love and did not buy
their wives[546].

The right life of a layman is described in several suttas[547] and in
all of them, though almsgiving, religious conversation and hearing the
law are commended, the main emphasis is on such social virtues as
pleasant speech, kindness, temperance, consideration for others and
affection. The most complete of these discourses, the
Sigalovada-sutta[548], relates how the Buddha when starting one morning
to beg alms in Rajagaha saw the householder Sigala bowing down with
clasped hands and saluting the four quarters, the nadir and the zenith.
The object of the ceremony was to avert any evil which might come from
these six points. The Buddha told him that this was not the right way to
protect oneself: a man should regard his parents as the east, his
teachers as the south, his wife and children as the west, his friends as
the north, his servants as the nadir and monks and Brahmans as the
zenith. By fulfilling his duty to these six classes a man protects
himself from all evil which may come from the six points. Then he
expounded in order the mutual duties of (1) parents and children, (2)
pupils and teachers, (3) husband and wife, (4) friends, (5) master and
servant, (6) laity and clergy. The precepts which follow show how much
common sense and good feeling Gotama could bring to bear on the affairs
of every-day life when he gave them his attention and the whole
classification of reciprocal obligations recalls the five relationships
of Chinese morality, three of which are identical with Gotama's
divisions, namely parents and children, husband and wife, and friends.
But national characteristics make themselves obvious in the differences.
Gotama says nothing about politics or loyalty; the Chinese list, which
opens with the mutual duties of sovereigns and subjects, is silent
respecting the church and clergy.

The Sangha is an Indian institution and invites comparison with that
remarkable feature of Indian social life, the Brahman caste. At first
sight the two seem mutually opposed, for the one is a hereditary though
intellectual aristocracy, claiming the possession of incommunicable
knowledge and power, the other a corporation open to all who choose to
renounce the world and lead a good life. And this antithesis contains
historical truth: the Sangha, like the