This treatise on the growth and early development of the Sangha (Buddhist Monastic Order) has often been referred to by scholars as the most complete and masterly treatment of the subject and, as such, invaluable to students of Buddhism.

It has besides a peculiar importance in relation to the history of Indian culture, As the author says, "Indian culture is composite and the Buddhist contribution to it during the two millennia and a half that Buddhism was a living religion in India is so much a part and parcel of it that no true view of Indian culture is possible by ignoring the Buddhist contribution". This contribution was made through the organisation of Buddhist monkhood. The author has shown with a wealth of masterly scholarship how this organisation was established and developed in India. His chapters on the Patimokkha and Vinaya regulations of the monk community, the growth of coenobium among them, their internal polity of communal life, written from a scientific and historical point of view, are interestingly presented and will hold the general reader. First submitted anonymously as a prize-thesis to the University of Calcutta, it won the Griffith Memorial Prize in 1919. The verdict of the university examiners has been confirmed by Buddhistic scholars the world over who hailed it on its first publication as a work of exceptional originality and of great value in the study of Buddhism and Buddhist history.