Many persons have often put to the writer the following question:—Is it credible that the founder of Buddhism established from the beginning a body of religious, with so perfect an hierarchy and so complete an organisation as to elicit the wonder and astonishment of all those who contemplate it with a serious attention? No doubt, Buddhists attribute to Gaudama all the regulations contained in the Patimauk, or the book of the enfranchisement; they maintain that the contents of Cambawa, or book for the ordination of Patzins, have been arranged by the same hand. But the absurdity of such an assertion cannot fail to strike the eyes of even a superficial observer. These two books, with their elaborate divisions and subdivisions, must have been gradually prepared and arranged at an epoch when Buddhism had taken deep root and spread its branches far and wide, and had become the dominant religion in the countries where it is flourishing. To confer splendour on the admittance of individuals into the body of monks, the rules of the Cambawa were enacted. To render the life of religious an object of greater veneration in the eyes of the community, the regulations of the Patimauk were devised, and were very likely brought, by a slow process, to the state of completeness we see them at present.  
Though Gaudama had nothing to do with the redaction of the books under examination, he is, nevertheless, the author of the principal and most important regulations.[322] It is in the Thoots or instructions he has delivered on different occasions that we must search for discovering the germ and origin of the principal points contained in the Patimauk and the Cambawa. At the conclusion of many of his instructions we find some hearers believing in him, and applying for admittance into the society of his disciples. When he approved of their dispositions, the applicants had but to renounce the ordinary pursuits of life, exchange their dress for the one regularly prescribed, and engage to live in a state of strict chastity: they then became at once members of the Thanga, without having to go through a prescribed ordeal. Faith in Buddha on the one hand, and on the other willingness to live in poverty and chastity, w............