Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c23.25

c23.25

The best diet for health is stated to be rice-milk with its "ten-fold merit in giving life, colour, joy, strength, readiness of mind, removing hunger and thirst, setting right the humours of the body, purifying the bladder, and promoting digestion" [*Mahāvagga*, vi, 24]. It was for these "ten advantages" that Visākhā decided, with the Buddha's permission, to provide the Saṁgha for life "with a constant supply of congey" [ib., viii, 15, 10]. With rice-milk is also coupled honey-lump. It may be recalled that these two foods were divinely suggested to the two merchants Tapussa and Bhallika as being the most proper meal to be given to the Buddha "who had just become Sambuddha" in his condition of prolonged fasting [*Mahāv.*, i, 4, 2].