are three.  Such triads are variously composed and the monks often speak of them vaguely as the “three precious ones,” without seeming to attach much importance to their identity.[870] The triad is loosely connected with the idea of the three bodies of Buddha but this explanation does not always apply and the central figure is sometimes O-mi-to or Kuan-yin, who are the principal recipients of the worship offered by the laity.  The latter deity has usually a special shrine at the back of the main altar and facing the north door of the hall, in which her merciful activity as the saviour of mankind is represented in a series of statuettes or reliefs.  Other Bodhisattvas such as Ta-shih-chi (Mahasthamaprapta) and Ti-tsang also have separate shrines in or at the side of the great hall.[871] The third hall contains as a rule only small images.  It is used for expounding the scriptures and for sermons, if the monastery has a preacher, but is set apart for the religious exercises of the monks rather than the devotions of the laity.  In very large monasteries there is a fourth hall for meditation.

Monasteries are of various sizes and the number of monks is not constant, for the peripatetic habit of early Buddhism is not extinct:  at one time many inmates may be absent on their travels, at another there may be an influx of strangers.  There are also wandering monks who have ceased to belong to a particular monastery and spend their time in travelling.  A large monastery usually contains from thirty to fifty monks, but a very large one may have as many as three hundred.  The majority are dedicated by their parents as children, but some embrace the career from conviction in their maturity and these, if few, are the more interesting.  Children who are brought up to be monks receive a religious education in the monastery, wear monastic clothes and have their heads shaved.  At the age of about seventeen they are formally admitted as members of the order and undergo three ceremonies of ordination, which in their origin represented stages of the religious life, but are now performed by accumulation in the course of a few days.  One reason for this is that only monasteries possessing a licence from the Government[872] are allowed to hold ordinations and that consequently postulants have to go some distance to be received as full brethren and are anxious to complete the reception expeditiously.  At the first ordination the candidates are accepted as novices:  at the second, which follows a day or two afterwards and corresponds to the upasampada, they accept the robes and bowl and promise obedience to the rules of the Pratimoksha.  But these ceremonies are of no importance compared with the third, called Shou Pu-sa-chieh[873] or acceptance of the Bodhisattva precepts, that is to say the fifty-eight precepts enunciated in the Fan-wang-ching.  The essential part of this ordination is the burning of the candidate’s head in from three to eighteen places.  The operation involves considerable pain and is performed by lighting pieces of charcoal set in a paste which is spread over the shaven skull.