monks to build platforms and confer ordinations on
the surface of what was effectively a caitya or monu-
mental embodiment of the Buddha. A famous account
of just such an ordination, or at least the sermons as-
sociated with it, is found in the PLATFORMSUTRA OF
THESIXTHPATRIARCH(LIUZU TAN JING). After a ma-
jor rebellion in China in 755, both government and
rebels sponsored the ordination of Buddhist monks for
fund-raising purposes; each ordinand paid a hefty fee
but then received a lifetime exemption from taxation.
In the Song dynasty (960–1279) blank ordination cer-
tificates were sometimes traded for financial specula-
tion, but the government eventually eradicated all such
abuses. It is generally held that government control of
ordination negatively influenced the quality and inde-
pendence of the Chinese san ̇gha.
Several developments contributed to a change in the
status and function of ordination in Chinese Bud-
dhism. Based on the voluminous vinaya writings of
Daoxuan, the Chinese tradition consolidated on the
use of the Dharmaguptaka school’s Four Part Vinaya.
It was only during the Song dynasty, though, that the
Chinese vinaya tradition really became formalized as
an independent “school,” and even here this word de-
notes a social reality very different from the nikayasof
Indian Buddhism. That is, a handful of major “public
monasteries” in China were designated as vinaya cen-
ters, meaning that they were the ones where most but
not all sophisticated study of the vinaya tradition oc-
curred, and where all Chinese monks and nuns were
ordained. The official ordination process became a
large-scale affair involving not only the ceremony of
vow-taking and induction itself, but a lengthy period
of preliminary training in liturgy (recitation of scrip-
tures, use of bells, drums, and other ritual implements,
etc.) and deportment (wearing of robes, monastic eti-
quette, etc.). All Chinese monks and nuns were, and
still are, united by their experience of this rite of pas-
sage, but the scale and formality of the event came to
mean a reduced significance in contrast with other
monastic relationships. That is, monks and nuns are
far more likely to identify with the “disciple lineages”
based on the local monasteries and teachers where they
initially trained in Buddhism, to which they often re-
turned after the weeks-long ordination ritual. In addi-
tion, elite segments of the monastic population also
identify more profoundly with Chan and MIJIAO
(ESOTERIC) SCHOOL initiation lineages. The use of
moxaor incense to burn marks on the heads of Chi-
nese ordinands seems to have begun around the six-
teenth century.
There are various accounts, if only from later
sources, describing the efforts taken by fourth- to fifth-
century Korean Buddhists to establish proper vinaya
practices there. Missionaries from Koguryo ̆(northern
Korea) and Paekche (southwestern Korea) were the
earliest ordained monks in Japan. The earliest ordained
Japanese Buddhists were women sent to Paekche in the
late sixth century, the choice of women perhaps de-
riving from their function as priestesses or shama-
nesses (miko) in ancient Japanese society. The quest
for orthodox vinaya regulations and qualified ordina-
tion masters preoccupied early Japanese Buddhists as
much as it had their Chinese and Korean counterparts
in earlier centuries, although here the source of canon-
ical praxis was China rather than India. A great ad-
vance occurred with the arrival of the vinaya specialist
Jianzhen (Japanese, GANJIN; 688–763) in Japan in 753.
He had been frustrated many times in his efforts to
reach Japan, becoming blind in the process. Although
the Japanese government installed him in a magnifi-
cent monastery (Toshodaiji, still one of the most beau-
tiful sites in Nara) and had him lead a spectacular
ordination ceremony at a platform on the grounds of
Todaiji, the “Great Eastern Monastery” that housed the
Daibutsu or Great Buddha, Ganjin was frustrated by
the Japanese refusal to consider ordination as much
more than an elaborate ritual.This tendency to disregard the 250 regulations of
the Four Part Vinayawas carried even further by
SAICHO (767–822), who argued that the government
should allow his newly founded Tendai school to or-
dain monks without reference to the vinaya, which Sai-
chorejected as being “hnayana.” Saicho’s goal was to
maintain control over the training of his own students,
who frequently did not return from their ordinations
in Nara; his wishes were granted just after his death,
and the subsequent growth of Mount Hiei and the
Tendai school as a whole meant that fewer and fewer
Japanese clergy took vows based on the vinaya. In the
early thirteenth century the Pure Land priest SHINRAN
(1173–1262), who like many important Kamakura-
period figures had trained for a period at Mount Hiei,
declared himself to be “neither priest nor layperson”
and publicly married. Although there was a short-lived
movement to revitalize Buddhism through strict main-
tenance of the precepts at about the same time, mar-
riage eventually became the norm for priests in
Shinran’s True Pure Land school (Jodo shinshu). Al-
though many Japanese priests in other schools main-
tained widely recognized but technically illicit
marriage relationships throughout the late medievalORDINATION