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FRAGMENTS OF A PRISONER'S DIARY
inmates of the Buddhist monasteries were also recruited from the poor oppressed classes. Havell writes: "For over two centuries, the Buddhist Sanghas were not influential enough to win many powerful patrons among the Aryan aristocracy, either Brahman or Kshatriya. It became the State religion only after it had outgrown its original revolutionary fervour. Then the doors of the opulent monasteries were closed to the down-trodden. It was ordained by the temporal laws that the Sanghas should not be used as a means of escaping secular obligations or evading the laws of the State. No one could enter them to avoid payment of debts ; criminals under punishment, deserters from royal services and slaves were also excluded.” Evidently, until then the Sanghas had offered a hospitable refuge to those unfortunate social outcastes.
The social background of the Christian cult of monasticism has been depicted by Gibbon as follows : “The subjects of Rome, whosc persons and fortunes were made responsible for unequal and exorbitant tributes, retired from the oppression of the imperial government ; and pusillanimous youths preferred the penance of a monastic, to the dangers of a military life. The afrighted provincials of every rank, who fled before the barbarians, found shelter and subsistence (in monasteries) ; whole legions were buried in these religious sanctuaries ; and the same cause which relieved the distress of individuals impaired the strength of the
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