The Bonze's Begging Bowl: Eating Practices
in Buddhist Monasteries of Medieval India and China
By Richard B. Mather [*]

Journal of American Oriental Society
V. 101:4 (1981)
pp. 417-424

Copyright 1981 by University of Minnesota

p. 417

    I propose this evening to make a few mundane observations about eating practices, especially as they were carried on in the early Buddhist monasteries of India, and later in China. As a point of departure I will cluster my remarks around three topics which are the subject of separate essays (or, rather, religious tracts) by the late fifth-century poet Shen Yueh [a] (441- 513). The first topic is the single premeridian meal, discussed in the essay, "On Keeping the tradition of the Monks' Midday Meal" (Shu seng chung-shih lun [b]). [1] The second is begging for food, and is the underlying theme of the essay "On Keeping the Tradition of the Maigre Feast" (Shu seng she-hui lun [c]). [2] The third is vegetarianism, the real subject of the essay "On Ultimate Compassion" (Chiu-ching tz'u-pei lun [d]). [3]

EATING BEFORE NOON

    All three essays are protests against abuses in the Sangha of Shen Yueh's own day and as such are valuable social documents for the Southern Dynasties of China in the late fifth century. But at the same time they may also provide insight into some differences between the perceived values of two major Asiatic civilizations. In the essay "On Keeping the Tradition of the Monks' Midday Meal." Shen Yueh goes right after what he conceives to be the Achilles' tendon of the human condition -- gluttony -- and shows how that has to be overcome first, before even the thought of enlightenment can be conceived. Shen wrote:

    The reason people do not attain enlightenment [literally, "the Tao" [e]] is because their minds are confused and deluded, and the reason their minds are confused and deluded is because external things disturb them. The three greatest disturbing factors are ambition, sex, and food. Although ambition may occupy the mind daily, the essential thing is to avoid a moment-by-moment enslavement to it. Sex is of course a relatively more serious matter. But food is the worst slavery of them all. These three are the root out of which all other evils grow, like branches and leaves. The Buddha understood that if these three are not eradicated, there is no point from which one may begin to seek enlightenment, so he had to find a method for making the eradication as simple and easy as possible. He could have just said. "These three things are the root of all evil and are therefore strictly forbidden." But these three are precisely the things about which human feelings are most deluded, and hence they are extremely difficult to dismiss by mere conscious thought. Even if the Buddha had wanted to prohibit them, in the end enforcing the prohibition would have been well-nigh impossible. It's like a raft of lashed boats crossing a river. Not that the boatman would not want to cross directly to the opposite shore. But since the current is swift there is no possibility of crossing directly. So he has no choice but to cross diagonally with the current, and only after a long time finally to reach the other side.... For this reason [the Buddha] moved up the evening meal to before midday. Thus, after midday the monks can be pure and free from distractions. Because of this freedom their conscious thoughts become simpler. At first they may still not be entirely singleminded, but after a while they become habituated to it.... [Eating before midday] might be called the "fish-trap and rabbit-snare" [4] for getting rid of enslavement to food, the "direct path" to enlightenment. There are of course some who think there is nothing more to it than just not eating [after midday]. But this is simply a failure to understand where the path leads...[5]

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    Shen Yueh obviously understood the rationale found in the very earliest Buddhist writings and in those of other ascetic groups to justify the "homeless" life of the bhik.su -- namely, the removal of all deterrents to spiritual progress. The bhik.su begged for his food, ate without complaint only what was offered, and that only between dawn and midday. He owned nothing -- neither money nor property -- only the alms-bowl (Paali patta), robe, bedding and medicine given him at ordination, with perhaps a needle and razor to keep himself looking respectable. He had no fixed abode -- only temporary lodging during the three months of the summer monsoon, the so-called vassaavaasa, where he remained in retreat only because begging became impossible during heavy rains. In other words, the bhik.su was totally dependent on the generosity of others for all his necessities, in order to gain total independence for himself.

BEGGING FOR FOOD

    With such a Utopian ideal of detachment from the world, it is easy to see that some compromises would eventually have to be made. The monastic institution which developed in India after the Buddha's parinirvaa.na (usually dated to 483 B.C.) was actually such a compromise, a "middle way" between the reclusive ideal of the "wandering ascetics" (parivraajaka) who "went forth," renouncing the world in search of an ultramundane reality, and the cenobitic ideal of a settled community, the Buddhist Sangha, which developed its own internal structure and regulations. No one knows the origin of the parivraajakas, some of whose number were the Buddha's first teachers. Sukumar Dutt believes they were never part of the Vedic-Aryan tradition, which was oriented toward the householder, but antedated it. Mention of them and their ideal of renunciation began creeping into some of the Upanishads as early as the period 700-550 B.C. The Buddhists and Jains were merely the most conspicuous of the numerous sects who adopted, with modification, their homeless mode of life. [6] But as the Sangha grew and its temporary retreats turned into permanent settlements complete with living quarters and common meeting-halls, the latent inner contradiction with the homeless ideal began to surface. If a monk is always on the move, begging presents no insoluble problem for his supporters. But once he is permanently housed, if he continues begging, he is faced with inescapable questions: Should he keep going to the same households, perhaps overburdening them and improperly limiting the opportunity for others to gain merit? And if there is a large number of almsmen in one monastery, how should they divide the territory equitably between them? Later of course most monasteries had their own eating facilities, and begging became largely a symbolic act. But could the donor gain any merit if the monks didn't actually eat what was placed in their bowls? In Theravada monasteries of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia today the practice of begging is still very much alive, though I have heard stories that the often non-comestible substances placed in the monks' almsbowls are promptly discarded in the trash-bin on their return to the monastery.

    Even in India, after the shift away from individual effort in the earlier tradition toward recourse to assistance from compassionate bodhisattvas under the Mahayana, a tendency which began in the north about a century before the beginning of our era, even the symbolic morning begging rounds were gradually abandoned, and of course this represented a still further retreat from the original parivraajaka ideal. But in China, which by contrast is a world-affirming culture which has always valued eating, the ideal of renunciation never really took root. It is not surprising, therefore, to find very few references to begging for alms in the abundant biographical literature or Chinese monks which has come down to us. There are, to be sure, rather dramatic exceptions, especially in times of crisis like the great exodus from north China after the fall of Lo-yang in 311, when the monk K'ang Seng-yuan [f] is said to have "made the rounds of the markets and shops in Chien-k'ang (modern Nanking) begging alms to support himself." [7] But that was precisely because he had gotten separated from his monastery in the north and was as yet "unknown" in the place where he had taken refuge. [8]

    The Chinese Sangha, certainly by the fifth century, had developed complete economic independence. Through generous grants of tax-free land from sympathetic rulers and pious donors they themselves became large landholders, leasing to tenant farmers or

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working the land with temple slaves and neophytes. [9] The monks themselves were aware of the Vinaya rule against tilling or irrigating the soil, for fear of disturbing living creatures, [10] and therefore they left this work to others. But begging for food, the sign of the monk's detachment, which was simply taken for granted in the Vinaya, and with which nearly one-third of the incidents recorded in the Paacittiya section (acts requiring expiation) are involved, [11] was never understood by non-Buddhists in China, as it had been in India, to be a sacramental act. All beggars were looked upon alike as vagrants who had lost the support of their relatives, "probably," as Holmes Welch suggests, "for some good reason." [12]

MAIGRE FEASTS

    Shen Yueh, fully cognizant of this public detestation of begging in China, did not attempt to urge reinstatement of an obviously unworkable tradition. Instead, he hoped to restore the true significance of a substitute institution for begging which had gradually arisen in China, namely, the maigre feast (chai or hui) [g], by which those lay supporters who could afford it would on certain commemoraive or special occasions feed large groups of monks and laymen simultaneously. The maigre feast in China was by no means a purely Buddhist innovation, even if it was explained by some to be an enlargement of the Indian Buddhist confessional assembly (Paali uposatha), which itself had originally grown out of an old Vedic lunar festival. [13] The rite as it developed in China likewise followed an ancient local precedent -- the periodic communal feasts held throughout the countryside in honor of the god of the soil, but purged of their original bloody sacrifices. [14] Even before their absorption and adaptation by the Buddhists, these communal feasts had already been co-opted by the Taoists and given the name "kitchens" (ch'u [h]) or "merit meals" (fu-shih [i]). [15]

    By Shen Yueh's account, even this substitute practice by Buddhist laymen in China had by the late fifth century fallen on evil times. In his second essay, "On Keeping the Tradition of the Maigre Feast" he wrote:

    For the cultivation of any religious observance there is always a reason. The modern practice of inviting monks and [instead of filling their almsbowls] merely preparing one feast [for them all] probably originated from the time long ago when the Buddha was still in the world and used to accept people's invitations [to meals]. People now use this means to create a simulation of that precedent. Long ago when the Buddha was in the world, he and the monks who were living in the sa^nghaaraama did not personally work at providing their own food. At the proper times they went on their rounds carrying their alms-bowls in order to bring merit to other living beings. In the case of today's monks, however, not only are those who observe the [single] midday meal already few in number, but there are even those who indulge themselves with sweet and rich delicacies and whose larders are full to overflowing. Today, if anyone extends these monks an invitation to a maigre feast, they will accept only if there is absolutely no way out of it. And then with well-oiled mouths they only nibble at the simple vegetable fare. Stretching their necks and furrowing their brows, they are definitely unable to enjoy the food. And because it is not eaten with pleasure it becomes impossible to establish the host's merit. It is a far cry from the way it was in the past when monks were not permitted to prepare their own food. In those days if it were not for the fourfold congregation [of lay supporters] they would have had no source of support...

    Those who leave their families to become monks are expected to be supported by their begging rounds. Both the Pratimok.sa and the Vinaya are very clear on this point. No permission is given for the monks either to set up their own kitchens or to keep servants [ching-jen [j]]. [16] But today, since they have amassed an

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ample store of food within their monasteries, the practice of begging has fallen into disuse. If by some accident a monk were to show up at someone's gate holding an almsbowl, he would immediately be cursed for being a monk and at the same time doing something so utterly vulgar and degrading. Since it is something everybody despises and is ashamed of, there are no longer any monks who go about begging. Everyone assumes the tradition to be no longer workable. But if even the son of King `Suddhodaana [i.e., the Buddha himself], possessing as he did the nobility of a cakravartin, if even he could carry an almsbowl in his hand and go on his rounds to bring merit to the donors, does not his example apply to common, ordinary monks a thousand years later whose own persons and status are low-class and menial and who are accustomed to providing for their own mouths and bellies?

    As far as today's invitations of monks to a single maigre feast are concerned, since they are at least a simulation of the [original] begging rounds, whether the monks go begging or accept the invitations really makes no difference. But, in consideration of the fact that today's monks no longer go begging, if we were to add the possibility that they might no longer be invited to maigre feasts as well, that would mean that the whole tradition of begging would henceforth go into oblivion. If that should happen, the monks would no longer belong to the Buddha-lineage, and once that is gone the Three Jewels [Buddha, Dharma and Sangha] will have fallen to earth.... [17]

    In the year 507, when Shen Yueh was sixty-six and had reached the apogee of his reputation as an arbiter of literary taste in the Liang capital, he withdrew from the court and moved into semi-retirement in the suburbs. He purchased and renovated an abandoned princely villa on the slopes of Mt. Chung northeast of Chien-k'ang and prepared to spend his declining days in genteel reclusion. Two years later, in 509, to celebrate this symbolic move away from the world's dust and din, he followed his own counsel and invited one hundred monks to his new home for a maigre feast, presenting them with 117 items of clothing, while he himself took the monastic vow for a twenty-four hour period. The text of his vow, prepared for the occasion, "Memorandum of a Vow of Self-renunciation" (She-shen yuan su [k]), explains that he was following the precedent set by Anaathapi.n.dada, the wealthy banker of Saavatthi who had purchased at fantastic cost the pleasure garden of Prince Jeta (the Jetavana), as a monastic retreat for the Buddha and his disciples, and who had often invited the monks to his own place for meals. Shen Yueh modestly described the food:

    The fruit is inferior to that in the grove of [the courtesan] Ambapaali (in Vesaalii), [18] and the crooked rice is not from the Fragrant Kingdom [of Gandhasugandha]. [19] Nevertheless the wild grains and mountain greens may still match them in satisfying hunger. [20]

    On at least one other occasion, perhaps toward the end of his life (which occurred in 513), he took another vow at a "feast for a thousand monks." [21] That summer he had been suffering from a prolonged illness, and the emperor in a gesture of concern was on the point of "exhausting his family treasure" to assemble one thousand monks within his personal quarters on the palace grounds for a maigre feast and prayer service on behalf of the sick poet. In the end, as it appears, the emperor's effort was abetted by others. Shen Yueh's personal friend, the Dharma-master Yueh [l] of the neighboring Grass Hut Monastery (Ts'ao-t'ang ssu [m]), assumed responsibility for eight maigre feasts of one hundred monks each, while Seng-yu [n], the renowned author of the original "Collection of Writings on the Propagation of the Light" (Hung-ming chi [o]), whose temple, Shang Ting-lin ssu [p], was also located nearby, played host to the ninth. Shen Yueh himself, presumably somewhat recovered of his illness, offered his own "hut in the fields" (a euphemism for his retirement villa) for the tenth, thus completing the total of one thousand monks fed. In the text which accompanied this vow he once more made reference to what he felt to be the origin of this tradition.

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    The Buddha, almsbowl in hand and walking silently, made his rounds from the Jetavana Monastery, never transgressing [the rule of] stopping at noon, to bring merit to other sentient beings. [22]

    Perhaps in part as a result of Shen Yueh's reforming zeal, the Liang Emperor Wu, who had held the thousand-monk assembly on Shen's behalf, continued to make extravagant bequests to the Sangha throughout his long reign (502-549). On several occasions after Shen's death he held huge assemblies, at least one estimated to have involved 50,000 monks, at the monastery he founded in the capital between 521 and 527, the Kuo-t'ai ssu [q]. [23] The holding of such massive state-sponsored maigre feasts on commemorative occasions was continued through the succeeding T'ang Dynasty (618-906) at the state cathedral in Ch'ang-an, K'ai-yuan ssu [r]. It was made state policy by the first T'ang emperor in 628. When the Japanese pilgrim Ennin [s] arrived in the T'ang capital in 838 he noted many such celebrations. One, which lasted the full forenoon of the eighth day of the twelfth month of that year he described in great detail in his diary. [24]

    So far we have seen that the Chinese Sangha preserved the tradition of eating before noon more or less intact, but substituted the maigre feast for the daily begging rounds. But what about the food they actually ate? Did they stick to the "five (permissible) foods" (pa~nca-bhojanaani) of the Paali Vinaya? These are usually listed as: (1) cooked rice (odana), (2) food made with flour (kummaasa), (3) barley meal (sattu), (4) meat (maa.msa) and (5) fish (maccha). [25] In the Chinese versions of the Vinaya the list is slightly altered to fit the Chinese diet: (1) cooked rice (fan [t]), (2) parched grain (ch'iao [u]), (3) dried cooked rice (kan-fan [v]), (4) Fish (yu [w]) and meat (jou [x]). [26] The Vinaya of both traditions also allows special foods and "medicines" for sick monks, which I again quote from the Chinese sources: (6) soup (keng [y]), (7) sweet cakes (hsiu-pu [z]), (8) milk (ju [aa]), (9) curds (lo [ab]), (10) cream (lo-chiang [ac]), (11) kiilaala [ad], a sweet beverage, (12) honey (madhu [ae]), (13) green vegetables (ts'ai [af]), and (14) various hard foods, or "chewables" (khaadaniya [ag]), such as roots, stems, leaves, flowers and seeds. [27]

    You may have wondered about the presence on both the Indian and Chinese lists of fish and meat. The truth is that vegetarianism in the strict sense was not enforced in the early monastic communities. The monks were enjoined to eat whatever was offered them. If they had not "seen, heard, nor suspected" that the meat was slaughtered for them (the so-called "three pure" [conditions under which meat could be eaten], san-ching [ah]), there was no problem. [28] Eventually the realization grew that eating meat was inconsistent with the Buddhist principle of "harmlessness" (ahi.msa), embraced especially by the ascetics and actually applied by the Buddhist monks to tilling or irrigating the soil, to breeding or slaughtering animals and to religious sacrifices, but not to eating what was placed in the almsbowl under the "three pure" conditions named above. Much later somewhere around the third century of our era, when the Mahaayaana version of the Mahaaparinirvaa.na-suutra first appeared in India, there was an explicit prohibition against eating meat under any circumstances. I quote from the Chinese version of this sutra by Dharmak.sema (translated A.D. 421):

    [The Buddha said,] "From this day onward I do not permit the bhik.sus to eat meat. If they receive faithful donations of meat from almsgivers, they should look on this food as if it were the flesh of their own children.... The one who eats meat has cut off the seeds of compassion.... The "three pure" [conditions] were only a gradual [solution] developed to meet particular circumstances... "[29]

    Before the appearance of this sutra in Chien-k'ang in the year 430 the Chinese Sangha and devout laity of the Southern Dynasties had been content to avoid meat on special fast periods (chai [ai]) -- three fortnights in the year and six days each month. [30] But after the Nirvana Sutra became popular in the mid-fifth century all this changed and was reaching a climax in Shen Yueh's own lifetime. In 517, three years after Shen

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Yueh's death, when Emperor Wu of the Liang Dynasty banned the use of animals for the state sacrifices, [31] it may very well have been at least an indirect result of Shen's earlier pleading. For Shen Yueh had become the emperor's chief advisor on ritual matters, and it is obvious that he had an obsession about taking life, whether it was human beings or only the pupae of the silkworms who were sacrificed in the production of silk. In a "Statement of Confession and Repentance" (Ch'an-hui wen [aj]), [32] probably written about 485, he made many frank admissions of youthful and even middle-aged excesses -- sins of greed, lechery and gluttony -- the sort of thing most of his contemporaries, who also left such formal statements, never deigned to divulge. He wrote:

From early youth my heart has been given to excessive desire. I never knew the meaning of compassion nor discerned the retribution of my wrongdoing. I consigned the furry, finny and feathered tribes to my kitchen, and. since their previous incarnations were not directly confronting me [ak] they were not subject to my pity. Chopping them up every morning and cooking them every night, month after month, year after year. I stuffed my belly to satisfy my appetite. It was all I ever did. [33]

Fully one-fourth of the document is concerned with such acts of cruelty to animals through hunting, fishing, cooking, and eating. It comes as no surprise, therefore, when we read his "Discourse on Ultimate Compassion" (Chiu-ching tz'u-pei lun [al]), to find that to Shen Yueh "ultimate compassion" means literally no harming any living thing, not even the tiniest insect.

The fundamental principle of the Buddhist religion is compassion [tz'u-pei [am], Skt. karu.na], and among the essential elements of compassion, preserving life whole is the most important.... However, as the corruption of vulgar custom has persisted day after day, the steady sinking of the world into delusion has become difficult to change. If one were to attempt to reform it in a single morning, doubts and misunderstandings would never be lifted. The establishment of any doctrine or way of life is always accomplished by slow degrees. Furthermore, among the things contaminated by the passions, addiction to sweet and rich foods is the most flagrant example. And when the addiction itself is further inflamed by the passions it is even more difficult to reform it suddenly. This is why the Buddha first instituted the "three pure" [conditions for eating meat] [34] as a kind of expediency [ch'uan [an], Skt. upaaya]. But in his final sermon at the time of his parinirvaa.na, when his teaching ministry was about to end, he greatly clarified the meaning of pity and bequeathed it as his final legacy for the future....

    In the exoteric classics we read: "If households with five mu of land plant them with mulberries, then the sixty-year-olds may wear silk: and if chickens, suckling pigs, dogs and swine do not miss their breeding seasons, then seventy-year-olds may eat meat." [35] If so, what the fifty-nine-year-olds and younger should wear is cotton cloth, and what the sixty-nine-year-olds and younger should eat is vegetables.... [In the Nirvana Sutra] the prohibition against eating meat is plainly stated, while the principle of eliminating the wearing of silk is unmistakably implied.... Earlier, ten or fifteen years before the Nirvana Sutra had become popular [in China] some of the famous monks on Mt. Lu [in Kiangsi; i.e. Hui-yuan [ao], d. 416, and others] had already been practicing vegetarianism. Was it not a case of following their intuition in spontaneous agreement with the Truth?

    Ever since the Nirvana Sutra came east to this land the "three pure" [forms of meat-consumption] have been discontinued. People have wholeheartedly submitted to the sutra's ultimate teaching and have applied its standards on an ever-widening scale. [If this continues] the violent taking of life will [eventually] come to an end and the growing of vegetables will never slacken.... Autumn fowls and summer eggs will become [as untouchable] as floating clouds; furry creatures of the hills and fish of the sea will become

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[as unpalatable] as the decayed rat to the yuan-ch'u [ap] bird [in the story told by Chuang-tzu]. [36]

    If there is any truth in this somewhat exuberant report by Shen Yueh, we have a rather closely pinpointed date (A.D. 430) for the beginning of real vegetarianism in the Chinese Buddhist community. But of course his analysis is probably grossly over-simplified. How much the growth of vegetarianism owed to the Nirvana Sutra, and how much to the scarcity of meat or to native Taoist dietary rules, would not be easy to determine. In any event, when the Chinese pilgrim Hsuan-tsang [aq] (ca. 596-664) was describing the eating practices of the Sarvaastivaadin monks in the Central Asian cities of Agni (Yen-ch'i [ar], modern Karashaahr) and Kuchaa (Ch'iu-tz'u [as]) in the seventh century, he noted with some condescension that "in eating they mix in the 'three pure' [forms of meat-consumption] and still impeded by the 'gradual teaching' [i.e., the Hiinayaana]." [37] His attitude can be taken as a fair indicator of the degree to which true vegetarianism had become the norm among Chinese Buddhist monks by early T'ang times.

    When Holmes Welch was investigating the actual practices (as opposed to the ideal prescriptions) for Chinese Buddhist monasteries during the first half of the twentieth century, relying largely on the testimony of refugee monks in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, he was able to confirm the remarkable continuity of most of the medieval practices I have touched upon. Begging is still given lip-service, and even occasionally practiced as a ritual, but still considered abnormal and degrading. [38] The substitute phenomenon of the maigre feast is also still practiced by laymen wealthy enough to subsidize monasteries to set them up, but it has come to be strictly a means of augmenting the donor's merit and is certainly not necessary for the monk's survival. [39] As for eating before noon, everyone insists that this is still the rule, but sheer physical necessity has compelled most monasteries to serve "tea" or "medicinal aliment" toward evening, transparent euphemisms for a simple evening meal of rice gruel, taken informally in the monk's quarters rather than in the dining hall. [40] As for the strict vegetarian diet, that was still in force in every large monastery in 1949, [41] though in the old days in Peking there were unverified rumors that what made the food so exquisitely delicious in one of the famous vegetarian restaurants operated by a monastery in the Western Hills was the chicken stock in which they cooked the vegetables.

    By placing so much weight upon the testimony of a single individual -- Shen Yueh -- I am not suggesting that the basic direction for eating practices in Chinese monasteries was determined, or even seriously influenced, by the radical and somewhat obsessive views of this one man. I would merely like to suggest that, since he was a sensitive observer and interpreter during a crucial period of transition, his adumbrations on the subject of food tell us a good deal about why the Chinese Sangha developed the way it did.

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Notes:

* Presidential Address, annual meeting of the AOS, Boston, March, 1981.

1. Kuang hung-ming chi (KHMC) [at] 24 (Taishoo Tripitaka 52.273ab).

2. Ibid., 273bc.

3. KHMC 26 (Taishoo 52.292c-293a)

4. I.e., temporary devices. See Chuang-tzu chi-shih [au] 26. 407 (Chu-tzu chi-ch'eng edition. Shanghai, 1954): Burton Watson (tr., The Complete Works of Chuang-Tzu, New York. 1968. p.302).

5. KHMC 24 (Taishoo 52.273ab).

6. Sukumar Dutt, Buddhist Monks and Monasteries in India, London, 1962, pp. 37-44.

7. Shih-shuo hsin-yu IV, 47; R. Mather (tr.), Shih-shuo hsin-yu: A New Account of Tales of the World, Minneapolis, 1976, p. 116.

8. Other isolated occurrences are recorded in the sixth-century "Lives of Eminent Monks" (Kao-seng chuan [av]), but they usually concern monks living as recluses, or experts on the Vinaya (see, e.g., KSC 11, Taisho 50.395c -- the lives of Po Seng-kuang [aw] and Chu T'an-yu [ax]).

9. See Denis Twitchett, "Monastic Estates in T'ang China." Asia Major (New Series) 5 (1956), pp. 123-146, and "The Monasteries and China's Economy in Medieval Times." Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 19.3 (1957), pp. 526-549; Jacques Gernet, Les aspects economiques du Bouddhisme dans la societe chinoise du V au X siecle, Saigon, 1956, pp. 25-190: Kenneth Ch'en, The Chinese Transformation of Buddhism, Princeton, 1973, pp. 125-175.

10. See Su-fen lu [ay] 11 (Taishoo 22.641b): "If a bhik.su by his own hand digs the soil or causes another to dig the soil, it is an offense requiring expiation (paacittiya)," Cf. I. B. Horner, The Book of Discipline (5 vols.), London, 1938-51, II.223.

11. I. B. Horner, op. cit., II. 295-365.

12. Holmes Welch, The Practice of Chinese Buddhism, 1900-1950, Cambridge, Mass., 1967, pp. 207-210.

13. Dutt, op. cit., p. 73.

14. Gernet, op. cit., pp. 249-250, 261-262.

15. See Rolf Stein, "Religious Taoism and Popular Religion." Welch and Seidel (ed.), Facets of Taoism, New Haven, 1979, pp. 56-57; Pei-yi Wu, "Self-examination and Confession of Sins in Traditional China." Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 39.1 (1979), pp. 10-13.

16. Gernet, op. cit., pp. 66-67. Servants were designated "pure persons" (ching-jen, P. kappiya-kaaraka), i.e., persons who make things permissible, because they protected the Sangha from "impure" tasks, such as farming, breeding, doing the commercial transactions, cooking and the like.

17. KHMC 24 (Taishoo 52.273bc)

18. Amba (Skt. aamra) is the fruit of the mango tree. The grove which Ambapaalii presented to the Buddha near the end of his life is the site of the opening chapter of the Vimalakiirti-nirde`sa (Wei-mo-chieh so-shuo ching [az]), Taishoo 14.537a).

19. The extraterrestrial realm from which Vimalakiirti summoned fragrant food to feed the people gathered in his house in the same city of Vesaalii (Vimalakiirti-nirde`sa 10, Taishoo, 14.552a).

20. KHMC 28 (Taishoo 52.323c).

21. See "Text of a Vow Taken at a Feast for a Thousand Monks" (Ch'ien-seng hui-yuan wen [ba], KHMC 28A, Taishoo 52.324ab).

22. Ibid., 324a.

23. See Tzu-chih t'ung-chien [bb] (TCTC) 153.4769 (Peking edition of 1956).

24. E. O. Reischauer, Ennin's Diary, New York, 1955, pp. 61-63.

25. Horner, op. cit., II.330 (Paacittiya XXV) and II. (Paacittiya XXX).

26. Ssu-fen lu 11 (Taishoo 22.866c).

27. Ibid.

28. See E. J. Thomas, The Life of the Buddha as Legend and History; London, 1927, p. 129 (quoting the Jiivaka-sutta, Majihima-nikaaya I.368).

29. Ta pan-nieh-p'an ching [bc] 7 (Taishoo 12.626a).

30. See Ch'ih Ch'ao [bd] (336-377), "Essentials of Observing the Dharma" (Feng-fa yao [be]), Hung-ming chi 13 (Taishoo 52.86b), translated, E. Zurcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China, Leiden, 1959, 1.164.

31. TCTC 148.4632. The text of the "Edict to End Killing and Eliminate Animal Sacrifices in the Ancestral Temple" (Tuan-sha chueh tsung-miao hsi-sheng chao [bf]) is included in KHMC 28 (Taishoo 52.293b-294a). The emperor's long treatise on "Ending the Use of Wine and Meat" (Tuan chiu-jou wen [bg]) is found, ibid., 294b-303c.

32. KHMC 28 (Taishoo 52.331 bc). The Chinese term ch'an [bh] stands for Skt. k.samaapa.na or k.samaapaya, "seeking forgiveness." Much of section 28 of the KHMC is devoted to examples of this standard form of confession made at the uposatha assembly by princes and other high-born laymen during the fifth century. A very perceptive discussion of this rite, and Shen Yueh's statement in particular, with its apparent derivation from the Taoist confessional, may be found in Pei-yi Wu, loc, cit.

33. KHMC 28 (Taishoo 52.331b)

34. See above, p. 421.

35. Mencius Ia. 7.23: James Legge, Chinese Classics (Hong Kong edition of II.149.)

36. KHMC 26 (Taishoo 52.292c-293a). For the fabulous yuan-ch'u bird who would eat only the fruit of the lien [bi], tree and was not tempted by the decayed rat in the claws of the owl, see Chuang-tzu 17.296 (Watson, p. 188).

37. Ta T'ang hsi-yu chi [bj] (Taishoo 51.870a); Mizutani Shinjoo [bk], Dai-Too sai'iki-ki [bl], Chuugoku koten bungaku taikei 22, Tokyo, 1972, pp. 12-13.

38. Welch, op. cit., pp. 207-210.

39. Ibid., pp. 113, 216.

40. Ibid., pp. 111-112.

41. Ibid., pp. 112-113.