Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c25.1

c25.1

**Training of Monks.** It was, however, chiefly for purposes of their religious education and spiritual culture that the monks were brought together in the monasteries. We have already seen how the monastery was a kind of federation of groups of teachers and pupils, of junior monks living in dependence upon the seniors. Every Bhikkhu is expected to accept a pupil, "to provide himself with a Sāmaṇera, to give a Nissaya, and to confer the Upasampadā ordination" [*Chullav.*, i, 27]. We have also already discussed the relations that must obtain between these junior monks or pupils and their seniors or teachers, whether *upādhyāyas* or *āchāryas*. We shall now adduce further evidence on the subject as furnished by the earliest Buddhist works.