Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c23.11

c23.11

**Manner of Eating.** When taking meals on invitation they must eat straight on whatever was given and not pick or choose in regard to the food served [ib.]. There is an interesting description of the Saṁgha or a band of monks taking their meals together on invitation, which shows the rules of etiquette at eating [*Chullav.*, viii, 3-6]. The senior monks sit apart from the juniors. Drinking water is to be received carefully in the bowl held with both hands so as not to splash anybody. Boiled rice should be similarly received in the bowl with a room left for the curry. If there be ghee, oil, or delicacies, the senior monk should say: "Get an equal quantity for all." The alms given are to be "accepted with mind alert, paying attention to the bowl, with equal curry and equally heaped up". The food is to be received carefully and any fragments of it falling must be picked up and eaten, for "each single ball of rice, for example, is the result of hundredfold labour" (*Chullav.*, v, 26]. The senior monk is not to start eating until the boiled rice has been served to all. The monk must not cover up the curry or the condiment with the rice, desiring to make it nicer, nor should ask for any rice or curry, unless he is sick. "Others' bowls are not to be looked at with envious thoughts. The food should be rolled up into round mouthfuls." The process of eating is to be marked by dignity and decorum as regards the movement of the mouth, tongue, and hand. The jar containing drinking water is not to be taken hold of with hands soiled with food. The senior monk is not to accept water for washing until all the monks have finished eating. In returning home, the junior monks should go first and the seniors after them. Before parting, the senior monk was to return thanks to the host on behalf of his party, of whom four or five who were seniors, or next to him in seniority, must wait for him while he was thus engaged [ib., viii, 4, 1].