They Held Many Shields

Published on 22nd August, 2016, on Outlookindia.com . Once upon a time, there was a monk in a Buddhist monastery who approached other monks to ‘def­ile’ (dusatha, in Pali) him. He probably meant sex, for in Buddhist lore, sexual desire was seen as contaminating one away from the path of dha­mma. The monks refused and so he approached the mahouts or elephant-grooms who lived in the vic­inity of the monastery. The mahouts obliged, but after the act started grumbling and speaking ill about the monastery and its residents. The monk was identified as a pandaka and it was decreed that a pandaka should not be ..