riginated in his
order. There appears to be no record of Hindu (as opposed to Buddhist)
monasteries before the time of Sankara in the ninth century, though
there must have been places where the learned congregated or where
wandering ascetics could lodge. Sankara perceived the advantage of
the cenobitic life for organizing religion and founded a number of
maths or colleges. Subsequent religious leaders imitated him. At the
present day these institutions are common, yet it is clear that the
wandering spirit is strong in Hindus and that they do not take to
monastic discipline and fixed residence as readily as Tibetans and
Burmese. A math is not so much a convent as the abode of a teacher.
His pupils frequent it and may become semi-resident: aged pilgrims may
make it their last home, but the inmates are not a permanent body
following a fixed rule like the monks of a Vihara. The Sattras of
Assam, however, are true monasteries (though even there vows and
monastic costume are unknown) and so are the establishments of the
Swaminarayana sect at Ahmedabad and Wartal.

3

The vast and complicated organization of caste is mainly a post-Vedic
growth and in the Buddha's time was only in the making.[417] His order
was open to all classes alike, but this does not imply that he was
adverse to caste, so far as it then prevailed, or denied that men are
divided into categories determined by their deeds in other births. But
on the whole the influence of Buddhism was unfavourable to caste,
especially to the pretensions of the Brahmans, and an extant polemic
against caste is ascribed (though doubtfully) to Asvaghosha.[418] On
the other hand, though caste is in its origin the expression of a
social rather than of a religious tendency, the whole institution and
mechanism have long been supported and exploited by the Brahmans. Few
of them would dispute the proposition that a man cannot be a Hindu
unless he belongs to a caste. The reason of this support is
undisguised, namely, that they are the first and chief caste. They
make their own position a matter of religion and claim the power of
purifying and rehabilitating those who have lost caste but they do not
usually interfere with the rules of other castes or excommunicate
those who break them.[419] That is the business of the Pancayat or
caste council.

Sometimes religion and caste are in opposition, for many modern
religious leaders have begun by declaring that among believers there
ar