BUDDHIST MONASTIC CODE I

Buddhist Monastic Code 1though, in saying that Dhamma does not cover the Mahāyāna sūtras or anycompositions (this would include translations) dealing with the Dhamma inlanguages other than Pali.This interpretation, identifying Dhamma with particular Pali texts, has caused nocontroversy in the context of this rule — although it seems unlikely that thecompilers of the Vibhaṅga would have had the commentaries in mind when theysaid, "connected with the goal" — but it has met with disagreement in the context ofPc 7, and so we will discuss it in more detail there.Reciting line-by-line. To make someone recite line by line means to train him/her byrote to be a skilled reciter of a text.Bhikkhus in the days of the Buddha committed the teachings in the Canon tomemory to preserve them from generation to generation. Although writing was inuse at the time — mainly for keeping accounts — no one used it to recordteachings either of the Buddha or of any other religious teacher. The Pali Canonwas not written down until approximately 500 years after the Buddha's passing away,after an invasion of Sri Lanka had threatened its survival.The Vibhaṅga lists four ways in which a person might be trained to be a reciter of atext:1) The teacher and student recite in unison, i.e., beginning together andending together.2) The teacher begins a line, the student joins in, and they end together.3) The teacher recites the beginning syllable of a line together with thestudent, who then completes it alone.4) The teacher recites one line, and the student recites the next line alone.At present, reciters of the Vedas still use these methods when practicing their texts.The origin story states that the Buddha forbade these methods of trainingunordained people because they caused the lay students to feel disrespect for thebhikkhus. The Vinaya-mukha explains this by noting that if a teacher made a slip ofthe tongue while teaching in this way, his students would look down on him for it. Ifthis were the right explanation, though, the non-offense clauses would have listed"proper" ways of training novices and lay people to recite the Dhamma, but theydon't.A more likely explanation is that at the time of the Buddha the duty of memorizingand reciting the texts was considered the province of the bhikkhus and bhikkhunīs.Although some lay people memorized discourses (Mv.III.5.9), and bhikkhus ofcourse taught the Dhamma to lay people, there was apparently the feeling that toteach non-ordainees to become skilled reciters of the texts was not good for therelationship between bhikkhus and the unordained. There are three possible reasonsfor this:240