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228
CHAPTER ONE
After these reflections, the King instructed his cooks: 'Listen! Henceforth, I shall eat what is left after the congregation has eaten. The food, etc. that has been prepared for me must be given in future to the ascetics.875 The laymen must be fed with separately prepared porridge." The chief-cooks replied, "Very well," to the King's order and carried it out all the time. The King himself
saw to it.
"c
Rice that resembled lotuses with its fragrance to be absorbed by the nose; green gram bigger than grains of black gram; 376 bowls of liquid; various sauces abundant and thick like the waters of Ghṛtoda," 877 friends of nectar as it were; flour-cakes 378 mixed with candied sugar; delightful sweetmeats; fruit with pleasant flavor; pastries 379 adorned with candied sugar; very tender marmarala; delicate cakes fried in oil and butter; a savory sauce; smooth curdled milk; boiled milk; and curds with sugar and spices which destroyed hunger--these were prepared for the laymen's meals, like meals for the King.
880
The noble-minded king himself gave food which was free from faults, acceptable, pure to the great munis.
375 39. Ascetics cannot accept food especially prepared for them. In I, p. 341 (1.6.202) 'rājapinda' is not acceptable, even though not prepared for the ascetics. Muni Jayantavijayaji informs me that the prohibition against 'rajapinḍa' existed for the followers of the first and last Tirthankaras, but not of the intermediate ones. Māṣa (urad) has large black seeds.
376 41.
877 42. See above, p. 123.
878 43. Mandaka. The editor of the text takes this to be the Guj. māṇḍā, a large thin cake made of millet and wheat flour' (Shah); 'sweetmeat balls' (Mehta).
879 43. Maṇḍikā (?). Said by the editor to be the Guj. khājā, 'pie-crust' (Shah khājuṁ). MW quotes manḍīkā merely as fem. of maṇḍaka, with no distinction in meaning.
380 44. Marmarala is the same as parpața (Seṣa to Abhi. 3. 64). MW defines parpața, a kind of thin cake made of rice or pease-meal and baked in grease.' It is the Guj. pāpaḍa, a thin crisp cake made of kidney-bean flour mixed with spices' (Mehta).
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