). 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