사분율에 나타난 미식(美食) 개념과 수행자의 음식 규정

Abstract

This paper examined the rules on Buddhist monks’ food intake based on the provisions related to gastronomic foods(美食, paṇīta- bhojana) in the Four Part Vinaya. Buddhist monks should resolve their livelihood by receiving alms from laymen such as mendicancy or invitation to dinners. There is no food prohibited to take and they can eat all alms. However, a few kinds of foods called gastronomic foods are restricted from eating. Gastronomic foods refer to tasty and healthy foods and their specific content differs according to Vinayas. According to the Four Part Vinaya and Vinayapiṭaka, nine kinds of foods are gastronomic foods: ghee(sappi), fresh butter (navanīta), oil(tela), honey(madhu), sugar(phāṇita), fish(maccha), meat(maṃsa), milk (khīra), and yogurt (dadhi). Among them ghee, fresh butter, milk and yogurt are dairy products. Given the Nidāna of provisions restricting tasty and healthy foods, the major reasons for restricting tasty and healthy foods are considered because of consideration of laymen’s perception about tasty and healthy foods and removal of obsession with tasty and healthy foods. This paper examined the issues on Buddhist monks and foods based on these two points. Tasty and healthy foods were precious and delicious foods which Indian people could not eat easily in their ordinary life at the time of Buddha. Therefore, monks’ demanding on tasty and healthy foods without special reasons such as being sick was very negatively accepted. In consideration of such perception by ordinary people, a provision to prohibit begging and eating of tasty and healthy foods by monks who were not sick was enacted. To Buddhist monks who fed themselves through alms without performing productive activities, perception by laymen who gave them alms could not be ignored. In addition, gastronomic foods were tasty healthy food and therefore there was high possibility for monks to desire the tastes. This is an important point in relation to the meanings of foods in Buddhist monks. In Puttamaṃsa-sutta of Saṃyutta Nikāya, a story was exemplified in which a husband and a wife who became out of foods while passing through a desert killed their precious only son and ate the meat of the son in order to explain that foods were like the flesh of the most loving son eaten to maintain one’s life in a helpless situation. In other words, foods to Buddhist monks are to eat for maintaining and supporting one’s body, not eating to satisfy one’s taste or decorate one’s body.