Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c10.t1.8

c10.t1.8

∗ "The monk, who makes an unordained person a partaker verbatim of the Dhamma, is liable to punishment" ("Pâcittiya," 4). I believe, not altogether in harmony with the ancient commentator in this passage, that by the term Dhamma the maxims of the confessional formula of the Pâtimokkha are to be understood. It can hardly be assumed that a monk, who, like Mahinda, for example, before the Ceylonese king, retailed the sayings or preachings of Buddha, thereby incurred the penalty of an offence. There were, moreover, among the laity themselves "preachers of the Dhamma" (dhammakathika), as the first of whom Citta is mentioned by name in one of the sacred texts ("Anguttara Nikâya," vol. i, near the beginning); and similarly the case is mentioned in the "Vinaya," where a layman summons the monks to deliver to them a discourse of Buddha's, with which he is acquainted, and of which the knowledge is in danger of being lost ("Mahâvagga," iii, 5, 9). As regards the character of the Pâtimokkha as a secret lore, cf. "Milinda Pañha," p. 190, seq. From this it also follows, when tradition represents a person like the young Moggaliputta, who is put forward as the model of a quickly progressing scholar, as still learning during the four years of his noviciate only the collections of the Suttas and the Abhidhamma, that the Vinaya was an Arcanum, which became accessible to him after his ordination, and not till then.—Vinaya Piṭaka, vol. iii, p. 299.