part of a procurer; sitting on the same seat as a woman in any private place; giving the robe to a priestess, who is not a relation, to be smoothed or washed; receiving a robe from a. priestess ; procuring a fleece of wool to be prepared by a priestess who is not a relation; sleeping with any one not a priest more than two or three times; reclining on the same place as a woman; preaching more than five or six sentences to a woman, except in the presence of a man who understands what is said; delivering exhortations to the priestesses, without permission of the chapter, or when permitted, after sunset; except in case of sickness, going to the residence of the priestesses to deliver exhortations; giving a robe to a priestess who is not a relation; sewing, or causing to be sewed, the robe of a priestess who is not a relation; except in a caravan, and when danger is apprehended, travelling in company with a priestess; sailing on the water with a priestess by appointment, except in passing from one bank to another; receiving food given on the request of a priestess; sitting in private with a priestess; sitting with a woman on a couch in a secluded place; being alone with a woman; tickling with the fingers; sporting in the water; accompanying a woman a journey, though it be only to the end of the village; entering the harem of a king without giving previous notice; taking food from a priestess, unless she be a relation; and allowing a priestess to prescribe what food shall be given at a public meal.

The priest is told at his ordination that when the head is taken off it is impossible that life can be retained in the body; and that in like manner the priest who holds sexual intercourse with any one, is thereby incapacitated from continuing to be a son of Sákya, or a sramana.* *

In addition to the ordinances that refer to the outward conduct, the priests are directed to live in a state of entire abstraction from the world, so that when in the midst of enticements to evil, all impurity may be avoided. The door of the eye is to be kept shut. When the outer gates of the city are left open, though the door of every separate house and store be shut, the enemy will enter the city and take possession; in like manner, though all the ordinances be kept, if the eye be permitted to wander, evil desire will be produced. . . . It is better to have a red-hot piece of iron run through the eye, than for the eye to be permitted to wander, as by this

* Kámawáchan.

means evil desire will be produced, and the breaking of all the precepts will follow. The mind will then be like a field of grain that has no hedge, or a treasure-house with the door left open, or a dwelling with a bad roof through which the rain continually falls. The same may be said of all the other senses; and it is therefore requisite that they be kept under strict restraint.

Numerous examples are given of priests who are said to have attended to these advices, and gained therefrom the benefits they are intended to impart. On a certain day, when Maha Tissa resided in the rock Chétiya, he went to the city of Anuradhapura to receive alms, and in the way met a female who had quarrelled with her husband, and was returning in consequence to her parents. She was a beautiful woman, and arrayed in a very splendid manner. Wishing to attract the attention of the priest, she smiled; but by so doing she showed her teeth, and on seeing them he thought only of the impermanence of the body; by which means he attained rahatship. Soon afterwards he met her husband in the street, who asked him if he had seen a woman; but he replied that he had seen only a loathsome skeleton; whether it were that of a male or female he could not tell.

A priest who had recently taken the obligations, on going to receive alms saw a beautiful female, by the sight of whom his mind was agitated. On this account he went to Ananda, a relative of Gotama Budha, and informed him of what had occurred. Ananda told him that he must reflect upon the subject in a proper manner, and that he would then see that the form he had looked upon was in reality utterly destitute of beauty; that it was filthy, defiled, unreal, and impermanent; by this means the agitation of his mind would pass away. This evil arose from the want of caution, as the priest had not kept a guard over the sense of sight.

There was another priest, Chittagutta, who resided in the Karandu-léna, a cave in the southern province of Ceylon, upon the walls of which were painted, in a superior manner, the stories of the Budhas. The cave was visited by some priests, who greatly admired the paintings, and expressed their admiration to Chittagutta; but he replied that he had lived there sixty years and had never seen them, and that he should not now have known of their existence if it had not been for their information. There was near the door of the cave a large ná-tree; but he only knew that the tree was there from the fall of the pollen and flowers. The tree

itself he never saw, as he carefully observed the precept not to look upwards or to a distance. The king of Mágam having heard of his sanctity, invited him to come to his palace that he might worship him; but though he sent three messages, the priest was not willing to leave his cave. The king therefore bound up the nipple of a woman who was giving suck to her child, sealed it with the royal seal, and declared that it should not be broken until the priest came. When Chittagutta heard of what the king had done, out of compassion he went to the palace. The monarch worshipped him on his arrival, and told him that a transient sight of him was not sufficient, as he wanted to keep the precepts another day. This he did in order that he might detain the priest; and in this way seven days passed over. At his departure the king and his queens worshipped him, and the king carried his alms-bowl some distance; but he merely said in return, May you prosper !" When some other priests expostulated with him, for not being more respectful, and told him that he ought to have said, "May you prosper, great king! May you prosper, illustrious queens!" he replied that he knew not to whom he was speaking; he had not even noticed that they were persons of rank. On arriving at the he walked at night to exercise the rite of meditation, when the déwa of the ná-tree caused a light to shine, by which the greatness of his abstraction was perceived, and the deities of the rocks around called out in approval. During the same night he became a rahat. From this may be learnt the benefit of keeping the eyes from wandering; they must not be permitted to roll about, like those of a monkey, or of a beast of the forest when in fear, or of a child; they must be directed downwards.*

cave,

66

and

The monks of the Greek and Roman churches have seen, in a similar manner, the necessity of placing a guard over their eyes, of being circumspect in their intercourse with women. Aphraates, the Persian anchoret, would never speak to a woman but at a distance, and always in as few words as possible. When the sister of Pachomius, the Egyptian ascetic, went to his monastery to see him, he sent her word that no woman could be allowed to enter the enclosure, and that she ought to be contented by hearing that he was alive. The Roman anchoret, Arsenius, would seldom see strangers who came to visit him, saying that he would only use his eyes to behold the heavens. Bernard is said to have walked a whole day

*Wisudhi Margga Sanné.

along the lake of Lausanne without perceiving it. In the rules laid down by Augustin he ordains that no one shall ever steadfastly fix her eyes upon another, even of the same sex, as this is a mark of immodesty; he would never suffer a woman to converse in his house, not even his sister, as he said that she might sometimes be attended by other females, or be visited by them; and he never spoke to a woman, unless some of his clerks were near. Simeon Stylites never suffered a woman to come within the enclosure in which his pillar stood. It was Basil's rule never to speak to, to touch, or to look at, a woman, unless in case of necessity; after a year's noviciate he did not know whether the top of his cell had any ceiling; nor whether the church had more than one window, though it had three. Theodorus enjoined his monks not to open the gate of the monastery to any woman, nor ever to speak to a female, except in the presence of two witnesses. The sainted founder of the Franciscans kept so strict a watch over his eyes, that he scarcely knew any woman by sight. When some one fixed his eye too steadily, and for too long a time, upon Ignatius Loyola, he was enjoined to make the government of his eyes the subject of particular examination, and to say every day a short prayer for fifteen months. The Jesuits were not permitted by their founder to visit women, even of the highest quality, alone; and when they conversed with them, or heard their confessions, it was to be so ordered that a companion might see all that passed, though he did not hear what was said. The monks of La Trappe usually keep their eyes cast down, and never look at strangers. Women are not only excluded from the second enclosure of the Carthusians, but even their church; and no one is permitted to go out of the bounds of the monastery, except the prior and procurator, and they only upon the necessary affairs of the house. In some of the monasteries it was the almoner's office either to enquire himself, or procure proper persons to enquire for him, where any sick or infirm persons resided who had not a sufficient support; but if he himself undertook this office, he was to take two servants with him, and before he entered any house, he was to cause the women, if there were any in it, to leave the house; nor was he allowed to enter any house in which sick or infirm women lay.

As we approach our own times, this state of abstractedness from all things earthly, or these precautionary measures against the entrance of evil, appear to have been carried to the greatest ex

cess; but to assimilate more to the practices of the Budhists. Peter, of Alcantara, who died in 1562, in order that his eyes might be 66 more easily kept under the government of reason, and that they might not, by superfluous curiosity, break in upon the interior recollection of his mind, put them upon such restraint that he had been a considerable time a religious man before he knew that the church of his convent was vaulted. After having had the care of serving the refectory for half a year, he was chid by the superior for having never given the friars any of the fruit in his custody, to which the servant of God humbly answered that he had never seen any. The truth was, he had never lifted up his eyes to the ceiling where the fruit was hanging upon twigs, as is usual in countries where grapes are dried and preserved. He lived four years in a convent, without taking notice of a tree that grew near the door." He told St. Teresa that he had lived three years in a house of his order without knowing any of the friars but by their speech, as he never lifted up his eyes; if he did not follow the other friars, he was unable to find his way to many places that he frequented. It is said of Lewis Gonzaga, 1591, that although he every day waited on the infant of Spain, James, and had to pay his respects to the empress, he never looked at her face, or took notice of her person.*

The permission to retire from the priesthood under certain circumstances was an important feature in the monastic institutions of Budhism. In this it resembled the usages of the church when celibacy was first enjoined among Christians. Even Cyprian (Epist. 62), after extolling the merit of the virgins who had taken the Vows, says, "but if they are unwilling to persevere, it is better that they marry." They who broke the vow were commanded (Conc. Ancyran. can. 19) to fulfil the same term as the bigamist. "Wherever (at the commencement of monachism) there dwelt a monk of superior reputation for sanctity," says Lingard, "the desire of profiting by his advice and example induced others to fix their habitations in his neighbourhood: he became their abbas or spiritual father, they his voluntary subjects; and the group of separate cells which they formed around him was known to others by the name of his monastery (so that the word which originally signified the single mansion of one solitary, now denoted a collection of such mansions). To obtain admission into their societies no * Alban Butler's Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and other principal Saints, passim. Whitaker's History of Whalley. Tindal's History of Evesham.