Uposatha ceremony After its first Section on Admission and Ordination, the Mahavagga proceeds to an account of the nature and establishment of the great fortnightly Observance of uposatha, whose principal feature is the recital of the Patimokkha rules. This provides monks with an occasion to reveal any offence they may have committed. Their silence, on the other hand, is taken to mean that they have “entire purity”, parisuddhi in respect of adherence to the rules. As usual, all kinds of subsidiary matters had to be defined and regularised in order to achieve the smooth running of the main concerns. In the case of the Uposatha it was for example determined that only monks living within the same recognised boundary should gather together on an Uposatha day. Therefore methods of fixing boundaries had to be established. Moreover the Uposatha could not be held at some place chosen at random; a place of a maximum size for the current needs had to be agreed upon within each boundary so that all the monks living there should know where to go and arrive in time. If they had difficulty in crossing a river – one that ran through their boundary – to get there, it might be agreed by the Order that they need not come bringing all their three robes; but if they left them behind they must not lay them aside in an unsuitable place where they might get lost or burnt or eaten by rats.Right and Wrong methods of reciting the PatimokkJa are given: whether or not it Should be recited in full or in brief, which to some extent depended on the absence or presence of ten sources of danger. ft was, ideally, to be recited by an elder (thera), but if he was incompetent, then it was to be recited by some other experienced competent monk; if there were none Within the boundary, a newly ordained monk was to be sent to a neighbouring residence to learn it there, either in full or in brief, and then return.

If a monk, Owing to illness, could not attend the recital of the Patimokkha, he had to send his “entire purity “, Pãrisuddhj by another. This monk conveyed it on behalf of the one who was ill and declared it (datuj) to the Order; but many occasions are posited when the entire purity comes to be not conveyed on account of a variety of things that might happen to the conveyer both while on his way from the invalid to the meeting-place and after his arrival there but before he had given the entire purity. This, and the conveyance and giving, or declaration of the consent (chandaj datuj) on behalf of a monk who is ill for the carrying out of a formal act of the Order, serve to show how extremely important it was held to be—a point stressed over and over again-that an Order Should be “complete” whenever its business was being discharged. This was not to fall into the hands of the few. Even those who, like Mahakappina, claimed to be “purified with the highest purity”, were not to go. For an Order would not have been complete if even one monk were absent. It would seem that the only reasons for not going to the Observance in person were severe illness and madness. In the former case the Order could be regarded as complete although in fact not complete provided that the entire purity and the Consent were properly and safely conveyed and declared. In the latter, the Order must grant the mad monk, here typified by Gagga the agreement for a madman This agreement is to the effect that whether the mad monk remembers the Observance or not, comes for it or not, whether

he remembers a formal act of the Order or not, comes for it or not, the Order either with him or without him can legitimately carry out both the Observance and the formal act.Such are some of the items and problems which had to be settled and solved before the recital of the Patimokkha received its final form. I do not recapitulate all these here, for they may be read in the text. Those I have given may be regarded as typical of the care taken to forestall and circumvent deleterious contingencies that might arise and disrupt the monk’s standing either in his own eyes or in those of his fellows or those of the world. The strength of the regulations governing monastic proceedings and individual conduct lies in the standard or criterion they give of how to act in a multitude of circumstances affecting a monk’s life.