Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c22.10

c22.10

**Restrictions to Admission.** With regard to adults or persons above the minimum age limit seeking admission to the Order, there were imposed certain conditions of eligibility which must have restricted recruitment for the Order to some extent and demonstrate the practical good sense and expediency of the Buddhist legislators in spite of their uncompromising spiritual idealism. Thus admission to the Order was not permitted to youths seeking it without the consent of their parents, thus showing the laudable concern of an Order of homeless ascetics for the integrity of the home, for the discipline of family life, and the respect due to its obligations without which family as well as society would be disintegrated and disorganized. This restriction was first introduced by the Buddha at the request of his father who grieved over the loss of all his male heirs by the adoption of the Order by all of them including his grandson Rāhula. The next restriction upon admission was on the ground of gross and glaring physical defects such as serious sicknesses or bodily deformities of which contagious diseases, consumption, leprosy, boils, itches, and fits are given as examples.¹ Serious moral defect was also a bar to admission; confirmed criminals [e.g. a matricide (*Mahāvagga*, i, 64)] were kept out. A due discharge of one’s legal obligations was also insisted upon, the obligations due to the State or resulting from economic transactions under the ordinary circumstances of life under Society and State which the applicant for orders proposed to leave. This rule had the effect of barring out government servants, and especially soldiers, the right to whose services belonged inviolably to the State; and debtors upon the fruits of whose labour their creditors had the first charge; and slaves who must procure their release from their owners. Thus these regulations show how the Order in its concern for the spiritual health and well-being of its members felt a due concern for their physical health, too, and the need of their coming to it with a clean and unblemished record as regards their previous career and life. The *Pabbajjā* did not permit the "going out of", or a self-willed, cowardly, fraudulent, or dishonest escape from, one's obligations to the family, the State, and the Society. The sacredness and inviolability of these moral, political, social, and economic obligations were thus very properly emphasized and recognized by the Order, which did not countenance the violent and revolutionary methods of accomplishing spiritual evolution. Man's inner growth must correspond to the silent and peaceful processes of growth visible in external nature or the objective world.