Theory of Government in Ancient India (Post-Vedic) c14.s4.6

c14.s4.6

shy of organisation. It is, on its spiritual side, too individualistic for corporate life. The Buddha on the other hand, partly perhaps because he had to establish a new church on secure foundations, organised his monks and nuns into fraternities and told them how to manage their affairs. How far he borrowed his rules from any existing economic or social corporations or political assemblies is difficult to determine. But it is remarkable that in the Chullavagga and the Mahâvagga, he is represented as announcing his regulations to meet the exigencies of practical life as they arose. Whatever his debt to others, he or his successors must be credited with a good deal of originality. From the point of view of political theory, the most striking feature of the Buddhist monastic code is that it practically ignores the state and touches it at very few points. In the third century B.C., Aśoka appears from his own edicts and the general testimony of Buddhist literature, to have actually assumed something like the headship of the Buddhist Church. But his ascendancy was due to the personal factor and did not imply any theoretical recognition of the state as ecclesiastical sovereign. The Saṃgha has its own rules of membership, of administration and of life in general. It derived its constitution from the Buddha alone and recognised him alone as its lawgiver. The great teacher himself had not been anxious to fetter the discretion of his followers completely. “When I am gone, Ānanda,” he said to his chief disciple, “let the saṃgha, if it should wish, revoke all the lesser and minor precepts.” But when the regulations came up for discussion at a council, the brethren could not come to any decision on proposed alterations and innovations. The differences became so acute that the council resolved, as the only way out of the difficulty, that they should adhere to all the precepts laid down by the Buddha, “not ordaining what has not been ordained and not revoking what has been ordained.”¹ So, in theory, at any rate, the Buddha remained the sole lawgiver. In the domain of practical administration, the general assembly of monks was the sovereign. But it must act in conformity with the procedure laid down by the Buddha. Nor was it empowered to alter the law of the Buddha. The Chullavagga definitely lays down that the vote of the majority was invalid, if it conflicted with the law. The tenth chapter of the fourth Khandhaka of the Chullavagga enumerates ten cases in which the taking of votes is invalid, inter alia, “when the taker of votes knows that those whose opinions are not in accordance with the law will be in the majority, or probably may be in the majority.” The fourteenth chapter of the same section, when describing the secret method of taking votes, lays down that if the taker of votes ‘ascertains that those whose opinion is against the Dhamma are in the majority, he is to reject the vote as wrongly taken. If he ascertains that those whose opinion is in accordance with the Dhamma are in the majority, he is to report the vote as well taken.”² The fiction of the right or wrong taking of votes is transparent. It is the supremacy of the Dhamma which is to be assured somehow. But we are not told who was to decide on the conformity of an opinion to the law. The taker of votes though, as we learn from another passage, was to be a very responsible and reliable person, could hardly take that role entirely on himself. Difficulties must have arisen in practice but the theory is perfectly clear that not even the Assembly could override or alter the law.