Vinaya (2): The Mahavagga
by T. W. Rhys Davids | 1881 | 156,382 words
The Mahavagga (part of the Vinaya collection) includes accounts of Gautama Buddha’s and the ten principal disciples’ awakenings, as well as rules for ordination, rules for reciting the Patimokkha during uposatha days, and various monastic procedures....
Mahavagga, Khandaka 1, Chapter 41
At that time the robber Aṅgulimāla[1] had embraced religious life among the Bhikkhus. When the people saw that, they became alarmed and terrified; they fled away, went elsewhere, turned away their heads, and shut their doors. The people were annoyed, murmured, and became angry: 'How can the Sakyaputtiya Samaṇas ordain a robber who openly wears the emblems (of his deeds)?'
Some Bhikkhus heard those people that were annoyed, murmured, and had become angry; these Bhikkhus told the thing to the Blessed One.
The Blessed One thus addressed the Bhikkhus: 'Let no robber, O Bhikkhus, who wears the emblems (of his deeds), receive the pabbajjā ordination. He who confers the pabbajjā ordination (on such a person), is guilty of a dukkaṭa offence.'
Footnotes and references:
[1]:
The robber Aṅgulimāla (i.e. he who wears a necklace of fingers), whose original name was Ahiṃsaka, had received this surname from his habit of cutting off the fingers of his victims and wearing them as a necklace. See Spence Hardy, Manual, p. 249 seq. {See also Majjhima Nikāya, Sutta 86, translated by Albert J. Edmunds.}