Bhante,

>> Okay, then I have another question to ask. If the assembly
>> has fewer than five regular bhikkhus, does the sanghakamma
>> fail? What if there are only four?

> This would seem to be clear, but perhaps is not. Pg 76 of
> Horners trans: 'Now at that time monks ordained through a
> group of two or three monks...(the Buddha said): Monks, you
> should not ordain through a group of less than ten monks.
> [later, of course, modified to 5 outside the Middle Country]
> Whoever should so ordain, there is an offense of dukkata...'
>
> So ordaining with just 2 or 3 is clearly wrong procedure,
> but would seem to not actually invalidate the ordination,
> otherwise the Buddha would have said 'naasetabbo'. But here
> he says 'upasampadeyya', thus admitting that the ordination
> does in fact take place (even though with bad procedure)

May I ask what are your grounds for supposing that the mere
absence of the word "naasetabba" means that a defective
ordination is to be accepted as valid in spite of its
defects (vipatti) ?

The reason that you cite above -- the Buddha's use of
"upasampadeyya" -- seems unsound to me, for even in the
cases that are naasetabba the Buddha also uses
"upasampanna". Yet here it obviously does not mean that once
accepted as a monk, a prohibited man's upasampadaa is to be
treated as a fait accompli:

pa.n.dako, bhikkhave, anupasampanno na upasampaadetabbo,
upasampanno naasetabbo
An unordained sexual aberrant, monks, must not be ordained;
[if] ordained he is to be sent away.

Notice that the eight cases where the Vinaya states that the
defectively ordained man is to be "sent away" (naasetabba)
all concern men for whom there is no possibility of ever
receiving a valid upasampadaa in their present life (e.g.
parricides, matricides, non-humans, sexual aberrants etc.).

I don't see how this gives us any grounds to conclude that
the defective ordination of a man whom the Vinaya does not
require to be sent away should *on that account* be allowed
to stand.

According to the Vinaya commentaries all of the five kinds
of defect (vatthuvipatti, ~nattivipatti, anussaavanavipatti,
siimaavipatti, parisaavipatti) *can* render an upasampadaa
invalid. That being the case, the absence of the word
naasetabba would appear to mean not that the defectively
ordained man should be counted as a bhikkhu, but merely that
the sangha does not have to send him away. In each case one
would need to check with the Atthakathaa to determine
whether the defect in question rendered the sa`nghakamma
"kuppati" or "na kuppati". (The Vinaya Pi.taka by itself
does not give enough information to decide this). Only when
this has been done, will the sangha know whether the
ordination can be allowed to stand in spite of its defects,
or must be repeated with the defect corrected.

Best wishes,

Dhammanando