THE UNIQUE FEATURES OF NEWAR BUDDHISMpriests of the families attached to the bah!s. This arrangement further blurred the
lines of distinction between bah!s and biihiis and today few people know where
the line is and what it signifies.
Gellner concludes his analysis of the situation of the bah!s with the following
statement:
"The decline of the bah! was evidently already under way when Siddhi
Narasirp.ha made his reforms, since the chronicle tells us that certain
bah! were empty, their inhabitants having moved on after taking up the
householder dharma. The members of the bah! made a virtue of their
being the descendants of the last truly celibate monks, but this was not
enough to stop a steady decline in population. Wherever possible
members must have transferred to biihii; but precisely because such
practice is in theory not allowed it is impossible to trace it or prove it.
The lower prestige of the bah! is due to the fact that the Buddhism of
the Newars is Tantric: celibate monastic Buddhism, of which the bah!
are the most prominent representatives, is given a place, but only the
lowest one. The bah! themselves have been less and less able, and less
and less interested, to combat this assessment."^60These considerations lead to three conclusions: (1) It is the bah!s not the
biihiis which are the repositories of a celibate monastic tradition. (2) In the days
when celibate communities existed, if celibate monks decided to become house-
holder monks, they left their celibate monastery (even if it meant leaving the
place empty) and joined or founded a biihii. They did not tum a de jure celibate
institution into a householder monastery. (3) Celibacy as such had ceased to be
observed in the bah!s by the seventeenth century. (Recall the inscription of
1514-15 noted above which speaks of a married brahmacarya-bhilcyu.)
Even in the days when celibacy was observed in these monasteries, it had its
unique features. Wright's chronicle recounts the foundation of I Bah! (Yarp.pi
Vihara) in an earlier era by one Sunaya Sri Misra, a brahman from the plains
who had become a Buddhist monk. He spent a long time in Tibet studying the
dharma, and finally settled in Patan where he built a monastery for himself
(Yarp.pi Vihara). Later two of his disciples, Govardhana Misra and Kasyapa
Misra came from the plains and each built separate vihiiras. Later yet his mother
and his sons came and found him in Nepal. He built for them a house near his
vihiira. Then "when a grandson was born, he made his son become a bhik~u
also. His wife placed an image ofKuliseswari to the south of the bihar. He made
it a rule for his descendants, that, on the birth of a son, they were to leave their
homes and live a life of celibacy."^61 Even in this early tradition where celibacy is
enjoined, one finds that the monastery is not open to all but is a family affair for
the descendants of Sunaya Sri Misra, and that a man first married and later
retired from a worldly life to the monastery. Presumably a similar custom was
adopted for the other two monasteries he founded for his disciples.