Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c23.36

c23.36

The robes, as we have seen, might be of different stuffs or materials like cotton, silk, wool, and the like, but they should not be of untorn (*achchhinnaka*) cloth [ib., viii, 11]. They should be *paṁsukūlika*, i.e. made up of "rags taken from the dust heap or of bits picked up in the bazaar" [ib., viii, 14]. The rags were also collected from cemeteries [ib., viii, 4, 1]. The robes thus made were on the model of the rice-fields of Magadha "divided into short pieces and in rows and by outside boundaries and by cross boundaries", a model which the Buddha asked Ānanda to follow [ib., viii, 12]. The robes were also to be of a standard size, viz. less than 8 inches in length according to the accepted inch [ib., viii, 21].