Saichō’s admonitions are important in understanding his use of the Fan wang precepts. Since the Fan wang precepts traditionally had been conferred on monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen, Saichō could have been expected to be tolerant of women. In fact, by barring women from Mount Hiei and forbidding his monks from leaving the mountain temple’s precincts for twelve years, he imposed much stricter rules than were found in either the Ssu fen lü or the Fan wang Ching. In restricting his followers to Mount Hiei for twelve years, Saichō was making a clear distinction between the lay and monastic worlds even though the bodhisattva precepts applied to both. Far from loosening the restrictions imposed by the precepts, Saichō was reforming them by adopting a shorter and more relevant set, and then supplementing it with his own directives and rules. The exemption from the rules for monks who traveled and preached did not permit such monks to drink or consort with women. Rather it relaxed the austerities which the monks underwent on Mount Hiei in order to allow them to be more effective in their preaching to the populace.