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18
PÂTIMOKKHA.
NISSAGGIYÅ PÅKITTIYA DHAMMA.
PÂKittiya RULES INVOLVING FORFEITURE. Here, venerable Sirs, the thirty Pâkittiya Rules involving forfeiture come into recitation.
1. When the robes have been settled, when the Kathina has been taken up by the Bhikkhu, an extra robe may be kept up to the end of a period of ten days. To him who goes beyond that there is a Pâkittiya offence involving forfeiturel
1 The following Rules, most of which have long ago fallen into abeyance, depend in great measure upon communistic customs of the ancient Fraternity, which are now somewhat difficult to understand. The following explanation of this rule, and more especially of the first few words of it, is therefore submitted with diffidence. At the end of the Vassa period (see below, Mahâvagga, Books III and VII) the Samgha, or community of brethren in any place, was accustomed to give over to some one of the Bhikkhus such store of robes (Kathina-dussa) as it possessed; and it should here be observed that no Bhikkhu had a separate personal ownership over his robes, though nominally given to him for his own use, and really his own subject to the rules, they were, technically speaking, the property of the whole Samgha (that is, here, of the Order as a whole, not of the community residing together at that place). The Bhikkhu above referred to then spread the store of robes out to dry (suriye attharati); and afterwards satisfied out of it the wants of any brother whose robes, through the dampness of the season or other causes, had become spoiled. Meanwhile, each of the Bhikkhus had, of course, to wear something-it being one of the points most frequently insisted upon that a Bhikkhu should be decently clad, in direct contradiction to certain then popular views as to the sanctity of nakedness--but, during the interval, some of the rules about the robes were temporarily relaxed.
Now the Mahavagga (VII, 1, 7) gives eight reasons by which the Kathina license would be extinguished for any one particular Bhikkhu alone-as it would be for the community at that place
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