Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence, thirteen times over
The identical four-bias agati standard from AN 5.272 — favoritism, hostility, delusion, fear — each paired with an office-specific fifth item — whether stores are protected, whether a robe has been received or distributed, whether a novice has been supervised, and so on — run once for each of thirteen named administrative offices.
A catalog of a working monastery's offices
Read as a set, the thirteen offices sketch the practical machinery of a functioning monastic community: lodging, storage, robes, food distribution in several categories, minor supplies, bathing cloths, bowls, lay-staff supervision, and novice supervision — a domestic administrative structure this collection otherwise rarely itemizes in this much concrete detail.
A merged page, not a hand-written summary
AN 5.273 through AN 5.285 have no individual files in bilara-data; the source compresses them into a single file under this hyphenated name, using its own peyyāla mark for each office's repeated three-part structure. This page follows that file exactly, giving each office's own substituted duty-item where the source states it and following the source's own abbreviation where it elides the rest.
A count the source confirms
The colophon closing this file gives the ordinal Cuddasamaṁ, ‘the fourteenth’ — counting this thirteen-office block together with AN 5.272 as fourteen discourses total, and immediately follows it with Sammutipeyyālaṁ niṭṭhitaṁ, ‘the Sammutipeyyāla is finished’ — closing this entire chapter, whose full scope turns out to be only these fourteen discourses on two pages, not the ten-discourse chapters typical elsewhere in the Fives.
Scale, compared to the largest blocks in this series
The same merged-file mechanism already used for AN 5.257–263 and AN 4.304–783, here covering thirteen sutta-numbers — larger than either merged page in the previous chapter, but still far smaller than the largest block this series has represented.
What follows
AN 5.286 opens the Sikkhāpadapeyyāla, this book's twenty-eighth chapter, flagged as containing two further peyyāla-compressed pages of its own.
Key terms
The text
Thirteen offices, one standard
§1“Mendicants, someone with five qualities should not be appointed as lodgings allotter … they don’t know if a lodging has been allotted or not … Someone with five qualities should be appointed as lodgings allotter … they know if a lodging has been allotted or not …
§2A person should not be appointed as lodgings allocator … they don’t know if a lodging has been allocated or not … A person should be appointed as lodgings allocator … they know if a lodging has been allocated or not …
§3A person should not be appointed as storeperson … they don’t know if stores are protected or not … A person should be appointed as storeperson … they know if stores are protected or not …
§4… robe receiver …
§5… robe distributor …
§6… porridge distributor …
§7… fruit distributor …
§8… cake distributor …
§9… dispenser of minor accessories …
§10… allocator of bathing cloths …
§11… bowl allocator …
§12… supervisor of monastery staff …
The thirteenth office, in full
§13… supervisor of novices …
§14What five? They don’t make decisions prejudiced by favoritism, hostility, stupidity, and cowardice. And they know if a novice has been supervised or not. A supervisor of novices with these five qualities is placed in heaven as if delivered there.”
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