Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c7.s2.9

c7.s2.9

Two events, which stand apparently in close connection with each other, must have played a prominent part in the development of this monasticism from its beginning up to the stage in which Buddha found it: the cohesion of monks and ascetics into organized fraternities, and therewith the emancipation of numbers, or even of a majority and the paramount, among these fraternities, from the authority of the Vedas.