When chanted

Chanted after its introductory verse, and recited when novices take or renew their training.

A note on this chant. The book prints this chant in Pali only, with no Thai translation. The English here is a working translation prepared for this edition — it is not the book's own, and has not yet been checked by a teacher.

Historical background

These are the ten a novice undertakes. Read beside the eight kept by lay people on the observance day, also printed in this book, the relationship between the two lists becomes clear — and it is not simply that two rules have been added.

The passage is framed at both ends by the same formula: he allowed, that Blessed One, ten training rules for novices, and that novices should train in them.

Meaning and purpose

The first difference from the eight-precept list is a division rather than an addition. There, dancing, singing, music and unseemly shows are joined to garlands, scents and adornment in one rule. Here they are separated into two. That alone takes eight to nine, without adding anything new to abstain from.

The tenth is genuinely new, and it is the one that marks a life rather than a day: refraining from accepting gold and silver. Somebody keeping eight precepts for a night and a day still owns what they own. A novice does not handle money at all, and that single rule does more to change how a person lives than the other nine together.

The framing matters too. The list opens อะนุญญาสิ โข — he allowed — not he commanded. Throughout these pages the monastic rule is presented as a series of permissions granted in response to something that happened, and the grammar is kept even for the rules that are least negotiable.

The chant

As the book prints it: page 57 →