Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c10.5

c10.5

Quickly as the formation of canonical observances seems to have attained a complete state, still there is no need of proving that it cannot have been the work of a moment. In the texts, which contain the rules for the life of the members of the Order, traces are clearly enough discernible which enable us to distinguish earlier and later phases of development. We can trace how a complex of injunctions first grew up, which were regularly propounded about the time of full moon and new moon in the confessional meetings of the Order; constantly recurring technical expressions described in all these rules what degree of guilt the monk incurred who transgressed them. It is quite possible that this old collection of prohibitions, which has come down to us under the title of Pâtimokkha ("unburdening"), the basis of the whole body of Buddhist Church-law, goes back to Buddha's own time, to the confessional meetings held by him with his disciples.* A later layer of the sacred texts shows us how further on the necessity made itself felt in the next period, of supplementing by new regulations the principles laid down in the Pâtimokkha. But no one ventured to add anything on his own authority to the old hallowed formulas. They therefore left the Pâtimokkha itself untouched, but undertook, in the form of commentaries and in new works, a revised and enlarged edition of the canonical rules. They did not hesitate, indeed, to prescribe punishments for transgressions which were not specified as such in the Pâtimokkha. Yet they did not presume in doing so to use the same expressions which had been adopted in the Pâtimokkha, but they employed new words and introduced new forms of disciplinary procedure for bringing to punishment any offences against the newly-constituted ordinances.* Thus the succession of earlier and later periods reveals itself to our research more certainly still and more clearly in the development of the system of connexional law than in that of dogmatic.