Family Matters in Indian Buddhist Monasticisms

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. ‘…in writing off the importance of family in Indian Buddhism by regarding such a monasticism as “late”, we will be forced to accept the currency of these views for almost a millennium, from the first century BCE through the eighth or ninth century CE – in other words, for the greater part of the history of Buddhism in India’ (76).

2. Laypeople would have expected the monastic community to be of upright ethical and moral behaviour, and when a monastic committed a wrong action – usually one that displeased the lay community – the incident would be reported back to the Buddha and he would create a rule (31). One example of this is in the vibhaṅga of the Kuladūsakasikkhāpada, in which two monks are behaving badly and indulging in all kinds of sense-pleasures. When another, well behaved monk, arrives at their monastery, a layperson tells him, ‘those people, Venerable Sir, who had previously had faith and devotion [in the sangha], they are now faithless and undevoted. Those (monastics) who were previously channels of gifts for the sangha, they have been cut off’. Although the laypeople themselves were not the ones who expelled monastics from the sangha or enforced the rules, they did have a significant role in holding the sangha accountable. (Yepi te, bhante, manussā pubbe saddhā ahesuṁ pasannā tepi etarahi assaddhā appasannā. Yānipi tāni saṅghassa pubbe dānapathāni tānipi etarahi upacchinnāni; V.III.181; translation by the author of this review).