is
described to the present day, serves to illustrate the original
intention that persons dedicated to his service should cultivate
solitude and meditation by withdrawing into the forest, but within such
a convenient distance as would not estrange them from the villagers, on
whose bounty and alms they were to be dependent for subsistence.

[Footnote 1: It is questionable whether the Sarmanai, mentioned by
Megasthenes, were Buddhists or Brahmans; but the account which he gives
of the class of them whom he styles the Hylobii, would seem to identify
them with the Sramanas of Buddhism, "passing their lives in the woods,
[Greek: zontes en tais ulais], living on fruits and seeds, and clothed
with the bark of trees."--MEGASTHENES' _Indica_, &c., Fragm. xlii.]

[Sidenote: B.C. 289.]

In one of the rock inscriptions deciphered by Prinsep, King Asoca, in
addressing himself to his Buddhist subjects, distinguishes them as
"ascetics and _house-holders_." In the sacred books a laic is called a
"graha pali," meaning "the ruler of a house;" and in contra-distinction
Fa Hian, the Chinese Buddhist, speaks of the priests of Ceylon under the
designation of "the house-less," to mark their abandonment of social
enjoyments.[1] Anticipating the probable necessity of their eventually
resorting to houses for accommodation, Buddha directed that, if built
for an individual, the internal measurement of a cell should be twelve
spans in length by seven in breadth[2]; and, if restricted to such
dimensions, the assertions of the Singhalese chronicles become
intelligible as to the prodigious number of such dwellings said to have
been raised by the early kings.[3]

[Footnote 1: "Les hommes hors de leur maisons."--FA HIAN, _Fo[)e]
Kou[)e] Ki_, ch. xxxix. This is the equivalent of the Singhalese term
for the same class, _agariyan-pubbajito_, used in the Pittakas.]

[Footnote 2: HARDY'S _Eastern Monachism_, ch. xiii. p. 122.]

[Footnote 3: The _Rajaratnacari_ says that Devenipiatissa caused
_eighty-four thousand_ temples to be built during his reign, p. 35.]

But the multitudes who were thus attracted to a life of indolent
devotion became in a short time so excessive that recourse was had to
other devices for combining economy with accommodation, and groups of
such cells were gradually formed into wiharas and monasteries, the
inmates of which have uniformly preserved their organisation and order.
Still the edifices thus constructed have never exhibi