Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c6.s5.4

c6.s5.4

Above all, charity (*dānam*) was the most widely practised of these ideals. Giving of alms is everywhere extolled.² Almost every householder, from the king down to the poorest villager, performed this charitable act, and believed it an ancestral practice (*kulavattam*).³ Rich people and the kings built alms-houses (*dānasālā*): at the four city-gates, in the centre of the city, and at their own house-doors, where food and drink (*annapānam*) were provided to the *samana-brāhmaṇas*, the poor (*daliddā*), way-farers (*vanibbakā*) and the beggars (*yācanakā*).⁴