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Continuing his journey east for nearly fifty yojanas, he came to the country of Tâmaliptî, the capital of which is a seaport. In the country there are twenty-two monasteries, at all of which there are monks residing. The Law of Buddha is also flourishing in it. Here Fâ-hien stayed two years, writing out his Sûtras, and drawing pictures of images.
My way lay among rather bleak bills, and past bleak ponds and dilapidated castles and monasteries, to the Highland-looking village of Kirkoswald. It has little claim to notice, save that Burns came there to study surveying in the summer of 1777, and there also, in the kirkyard, the original of Tam o' Shanter sleeps his last sleep.
As to what remains, the monasteries of the Bonzas were daily thinned, and grew insensibly to be dispeopled by the desertion of young men, who had some remainders of modesty and morality. Being ashamed of leading a brutal life, and of deceiving the simple, they laid by their habits of Bonzas, together with the profession, that, coming back into the world, they might more easily be converted.
The support of the Buddhist monasteries depends on charity, and a procession of priests from each monastery goes about with mendicant bowls or baskets, each morning soliciting food and fruit, everything being placed in one receptacle. Rice, however, is the principal contribution. We also visited the Aindaw-Yah Pagoda, the oldest in Mandalay.
The monks used to give even their time of rest to the decoration of the volumes which added a splendour to their monasteries. But now, it is complained, the Regulars even reject their own rule that books are to be asked for every day. They carry bows and arrows, or sword and buckler, and play at dice and draughts, and give no alms except to their dogs.
At Dundee there is a numerous Catholic population. In the whole diocese there are thirty-three priests, of whom twelve are members of the religious Society of Redemptorists. There are religious communities of Sisters of Mercy, Little Sisters of the Poor, and Ursulines of Jesus. The Marist Brothers and Redemptorists have their monasteries, and there is a creditable number of congregational schools.
John Hotham, Bishop of Ely, obtained possession of the Manor of Cuckney in the 14th century, and devoted its revenues to the Abbey, with an addition of eight canons to be supported from its wealth. Then came the edict of Henry VIII., which suppressed monasteries as being detrimental to the State. The abbots and their canons were dispersed, and their lands and property given to royal favourites.
There was great danger that the remains of classic literature might be destroyed in the general devastation of Italy. The monasteries rescued the literary fragments that escaped, and preserved them. "For a period of more than six centuries the safety of the literary heritage of Europe, one may say of the world, depended upon the scribes of a few dozen scattered monasteries."
Spurious monasteries sprang up with rich lay-abbots at their head, who made the office hereditary in their families. Laymen were appointed to rich benefices simply that they might enjoy the revenues. These lay-abbots even went so far as to live with their families in their monasteries, and rollicking midnight banquets were substituted for the asceticism demanded by the vows.
Again, there is a story which is told, I think, of one of the first monasteries of the Benedictine order.
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