Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/288

 No. 5.

TĀṆḌULA-NĀḶI JĀTAKA.

The Measure of Rice.

"What is the value of a mneasure of rice," etc. — This the Teacher told while sojourning at Jetavana, about a monk called Udāyin the Simpleton.

At that time the Elder named Dabba, a Mallian by birth, held the office of steward in the Order. When he issued the food-tickets in the morning, Udāyin sometimes received a better kind of rice, and sometimes an inferior kind. One day when he received the inferior kind, he threw the distribution-hall into confusion, crying out, "Why should Dabba know better than any other of us how to give out the tickets?"

When he thus threw the office into disorder, they gave him the basket of tickets, saying, "Well, then, do you give out the tickets to-day!"

From that day he began to distribute tickets to the Order; but when giving them out he did not know which meant the better rice and which the worse, nor in which

1 Compare Léon Feer in the Journal Asiatique, 1876, vol. viii. pt. ii. pp. 510-525.

2 The Bhatt' Uddesika, or steward, was a senior monk who had the duty of seeing that all the brethren were provided with their daily food. Sometimes a layman offered to provide it (e.g. above, p. 162); sometimes grain, or other food belonging to the monastery, was distributed to the monks by the steward giving them tickets to exchange at the storehouse. The necessary qualifications for the stewardship are said to be: 1. Knowledge of the customs regulating the distribution. 2. A sense of justice. 3. Freedom from ignorance. 4. Absence of fear. 6. Good temper.