Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c10.4

c10.4

This early appearance of a form of associated life strictly governed by law can cause no astonishment. It is the counterpart of the equally early appearance of a matured and formulated dogmatic; the same characteristic features of the period in which Buddhism developed itself, the same forces of preceding history upon which it rests, explain the one phenomenon as well as the other. The monastic orders professing other faiths, preceding and coeval with Buddha's Order, and, in a not less degree, the common source of all these sects, Brahmanism, have furnished for the formation of a Church polity, as they did in the case of dogmatic speculation, a set of ready-made forms, which Buddhism had only to appropriate.