On Some Who are Not Allowed to Become Buddhist Monks Or Nuns: An Old List of Types of Slaves Or Unfree Laborers (Report‪)‬

As has been so often times the case in work on the social history of early India, when Buddhist sources have been cited in discussions of slavery or servitude those sources have been almost exclusively Pali sources. (1) This, of course, has introduced a degree of distortion that is only now starting to become clear since it is also starting to become clear that, for example, in matters of Vinaya the Pali material may be the least representative, (2) and Vinaya has a good deal of material bearing on Indian social history. But it has also meant that a wealth of material in Sanskrit and other Buddhist languages has been all but ignored and left unexplored, with potentially important connections being missed and lexical problems left unsolved. My purpose here is to give but one small example. An Upasampada-karmavaca was among the very first Pali texts to become known in Europe. (3) It is a manual giving the rules and procedures for ordaining a Buddhist monk, and it gives a series of questions that the candidate must be asked regarding things that would disqualify him for ordination. Two of these things are of particular interest. In Spiegel's edition, published in 1841, after the candidate is asked if he is a human and a male, and he answers in the affirmative, he is then asked bhujisso'si "Are you a free man?" and anano'si "Are you free from debt?" (4) These, too, must be answered affirmatively or the individual cannot be ordained. It has already been pointed out that in the Mulasarvastivadin ordination formulary the second of these two questions differs significantly--and we have several versions of it preserved in Sanskrit. (5) In these Mulasarvastivadin versions the candidate is first asked if he has any debt (deya), whether small or large, and if he answers yes he is then asked if he will be able to pay it after he has entered the religious life (pravrajya). Unless he says he will be able to do so he cannot be ordained. (6) The Mulasarvastivadin version of the first question also differs significantly.