Dear Bhante,

Your description of the sa.mghaatii conforms to what I understood it to
be -- it was the PED's "waist cloth" that I found bizarre.

As I have intimated, I am working on the Mahayana-parinirvana-sutra
(MPNS) -- an extremely important text that gives some new insights into the
origins of Mahayana and the socio-monastic conditions prevailing in India
around the time it was compiled, circa CE200 - 250. It is very critical of
the state of the sangha of the time -- the section where sa.mghaatiis etc
are mentioned is preceded by a description of poseur ascetics who think they
can impress folk with their attempts to look the part of an other-worldly
sage in their soiled rags and hunger-pinched faces. It then moves on to a
long attack on the vinaya-modifiers -- most likely the Mula-sarvastivadins.
Gregory Schopen, who I recommended recently, has been a great help in
understanding what the MPNS is criticizing. What comes across in his work is
that most viharas were by then thriving business centres, which also
functioned as warehouses, money-lending banks, trading-posts for
commodities, tourist attractions etc etc. All very similar to the big
thriving medieval European monasteries.

> Accepting meat and fish is, of course, allowable for monks as long as
> it is not the result of slaughtering an animal specifically to offer
> alms to the monks.

Yes, but what the MPNS is talking about is monks accepting raw meat and
fish, storing it, and cooking themselves. The next bit in my quote mentions
sa.mghaatiis. I think what is being criticized here is monks accumulating
whole wardrobes of garments, having them tailor-made, made of improper
cloth, trading in them with other monks etc. That's my straight-forward
interpretation of the mention here. However, there might be an alternative.
PaliYahoo might not be the best place to discuss the delights of decoding
Tibetan but, as with Pali texts, scribal errors and misprints occur. The
Tibetan for sa.mghaatii is "snams-sbyar" but "snums-sbyar" would mean
something like "prepared / cooked with fat", or it could be a misreading of
the original but lost Skt, since the Chinese of the same section refers
specifically to "doing cooking oneself".

> The Mahaayaanists tried to find fault.

As a life-long vegetarian, I favour the Mahayana reasons for abstention, but
let's not get involved in this here since it is a rancorous and divisive
issue.

> Sesame oil is allowable

But when the MPNS talks about pots of sesame oil, we should be thinking of
vihara warehouses full of them stored for trading as well as monastic use.
So, it's not the oil that's the problem here but the stock-piling and
trading.

Finally, I think my puzzling "boiled medicinal ghee" (or perhaps "oil" is
better) is referring to body massage oil (a bit like aromatherapy massages
?), which I believe is not permitted in the conservative Vinayas, as it
comes in a section on items concerned with monks preening themselves, thus:

"who apply themselves to cosmetic preparations, song and dance; who possess
garlands of flowers, betel nut mixtures, boiled medicinal/ herbal oil,
incense and unguents; who learn ways of improving their comportment and who
busy themselves with entertainments."

Sounds like fun ! If all these kinds of things and others had explicit or
tacit approval, little wonder that the Mula-sarvastivadin Vinaya became the
predominant Vinaya in northern India.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge