vices performed
there and to some extent attended by the laity, and thirdly the rites
performed by monks on behalf of the laity, especially funeral
ceremonies.

The Chinese Tripitaka contains no less than five recensions of the
Vinaya, and the later pilgrims who visited India made it their special
object to obtain copies of the most correct and approved code. But
though the theoretical value of these codes is still admitted, they
have for practical purposes been supplemented by other manuals of
which the best known are the Fan-wang-ching or Net of Brahma[856] and
the Pai-chang-ts'ung-lin-ch'ing-kuei or Rules of Purity of the
Monasteries of Pai Chang.

The former is said to have been translated in A.D. 406 by Kumarajiva
and to be one chapter of a larger Sanskrit work. Some passages of it,
particularly the condemnation of legislation which forbids or imposes
conditions on the practice of Buddhism,[857] read as if they had been
composed in China rather than India, and its whole attitude towards
the Hinayanist Vinaya as something inadequate and superseded, can
hardly have been usual in India or China even in the time of I-Ching
(700 A.D.). Nothing is known of the Indian original, but it certainly
was not the Brahmajalasutta of the Pali Canon.[858] Though the
translation is ascribed to so early a date, there is no evidence
that the work carried weight as an authority before the eighth
century. Students of the Vinaya, like I-Ching, ignore it. But when the
scholarly endeavour to discover the most authentic edition of the
Vinaya began to flag, this manual superseded the older treatises.
Whatever external evidence there may be for attributing it to
Kumarajiva, its contents suggest a much later date and there is no
guarantee that a popular manual may not have received additions. The
rules are not numbered consecutively but as 1-10 and 1-48, and it may
be that the first class is older than the second. In many respects it
expounds a late and even degenerate form of Buddhism for it
contemplates not only a temple ritual (including the veneration of
images and sacred books), but also burning the head or limbs as a
religious practice. But it makes no allusion to salvation through
faith in Amitabha and says little about services to be celebrated for
the dead.[859]

Its ethical and disciplinary point of view is dogmatically Mahayanist
and similar to that of the Bodhicaryavatara. The Hinayana is several
times denounced[860] and calle