Note 10 — Chapter VI

In these new instructions delivered to the Rahans, Buddha gives them the power of receiving into the ranks of the assembly those of their converts who should prove foremost in understanding the law and observing its highest practices. He empowers them to confer on others the dignity of Rahans, and admit them to the various steps that lead to that uppermost one. To observe uniformity in the reception of candidates to the various orders, Buddha laid down a number of regulations embodied in the Kambawa, or book used as a sort of ritual on the days of admission of candidates to the dignity of Patzins and Rahans. The contents of this small but interesting work may be seen in the notice on the order of talapoins, or Buddhist monks, inserted at the end of this volume. That the reader may have now an idea of the general purpose and object of these regulations, I will sketch a slight outline of them. The candidate, who seeks for admission among the members of the order, has to appear before an assembly of Rahans, presided over by a dignitary. He must be provided with the dress of the order, and a patta or the pot of a mendicant. He is presented to the assembly by a Rahan, upon whom devolves the important duty of instructing him in all that regards the profession he is about to embrace, and lead him through the ordeal of the ceremony. He is solemnly interrogated before the assembly on the several defects and impediments which incapacitate an individual for admission into the order. On his declaring that he is free from such impediments, he is, with the consent of the assembled fathers, promoted to the rank of Patzin. But before he is allowed to take his place among his brethren, he is instructed in the four principal duties he will have to observe, and warned against the four capital sins, the commission of which would deprive him of his high and holy character, and cause his expulsion from the society.

It is supposed that the candidate, previous to his making application for obtaining the dignity of Rahan, has qualified himself by study and a good life for admittance among the perfect. By surrounding the admission of candidates into the ranks of the order with a display of ceremonies, the shrewd framer of these regulations intended to encircle the whole body with a halo of dignity and sacredness, and at the same time to provide, as far as human wisdom allows, against the reception of unworthy postulants.

Hitherto Buddha had reserved to himself alone the power of elevating hearers or converts to the dignity of Rahans; now he transfers to his disciples that power and bids them use it as they had seen him do, in behalf of those whom they deem worthy applicants. He has established a society, and striven to infuse into it all the elements necessary for keeping it up hereafter, and securing its existence and permanency. He sets up a kind of ecclesiastical hierarchy, which is to be perpetuated during the ages to come by the same means and power that brought it into existence.

Having put such a power into the hands of his disciples, Buddha very properly exhorts them to emulate him in his efforts to become perfect. He sets himself as a pattern of perfection, and bids them all imitate the examples he places before them. He shows briefly to them by what means he has attained the state of Arahatapho, and stimulates them to the adopting of similar means. The word Arahatapho is composed of two words—arahat, which means perfect, and pho or phola, as the orthography indicates, which means reward, merit. The state of Arahatapho is that in which a man enjoys the merits or reward of perfection, which he has reached by the practice of virtue, and particularly the acquirement of wisdom or knowledge of the highest points of the law. It is used often in opposition to the word Arahatamegata, which signifies the ways or roads leading to perfection.