Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.s1.t2.2

c8.s1.t2.2

To all appearance this circle of disciples was even in the earliest days by no means a free society, bound together by merely internal cords, something like the band of Jesus' disciples. We can scarcely doubt that it was from the beginning much more of a community of ascetics organized according to fixed rules, a formal monastic order with Buddha at its head. The forms and external technic of a religious life of this class had been already established in India long before the age of Buddha : a monastic order appeared then to the religious consciousness to be the reasonable, natural form, in which alone the life of those who are associated in a common struggle for release could find expression. As there was nothing in Buddha's attitude generally which could be regarded by his contemporaries as unusual, he had not to introduce anything fundamentally new; on the contrary, it would have been an innovation if he had undertaken to preach a way of salvation, which did not proceed on a basis of monastic observances.