Service Occupation

The washerman-dyer (rajaka), the painter (cittakara), the barber (nahapita, kappaka kasavato), the tailor-weaver (pesakara, tantavaya, tunnavaya), and cook (alarika, suda) are the persons who follow service occupations. The rajaka washes the clothes and returns them to the owner.^[1] He also dyes cloth, and perhaps paints on it as well.^[2] The cittakara also paints but does so on well polished panels, walls and cloth.^[3] The most recorded of the service occupations is that of nahapita. When he is old, his sons follow the same craft and go around the local community giving services in exchange for food to be used in giving a meal to the Buddha and the monks.^[4] He acts as a messenger for a brahmana.^[5] When the sakya youths go out of their country to join the order, he is their servant-companion and the recipient of the personal effects (almkara) of his masters.^[6] His occupation is listed as a low sippa^[7] and he is abused by angry nuns as lowborn (nihina-jacco) and the remover of dirt (malamajjano).^[8] Yet his craft may not have been very low, because the brahmana Lohicca uses him as a messenger and even the king Makhadeva addresses him as samma, a term which signifies familiarity, instead of bhane, the term more appropriately used by a master for a servant.^[9] The fact that he is used as a messenger at all shows his role to be greater then denoted by his occupation. That this is so, can also be seen from the fact that he betrays king Dighiti, who was at one time his master, to the king of Kasi, where he stays.^[10] On another occasion, he is the receiver of the gift of a village (gama varam) from the legendary king Makhadeva for being his personal attendant.^[11]

The occupation of a pesakara is also described as low sippa.^[12] He is described as tantavaya and from the description of his activities he is a weaver.^[13] In another place a tunnavaya or tailor is described as poor (daliddo) where he attempts to build a house for the monks without the proper material for building and without the proper guidance on how to build it.^[14] The cook (acchadana) and gravity (abhihara) for good service.^[15]

Nahapaka or the bath attendant is the last service occupation in our list. We do not know much about him except the detailed description of his craft.^[16] However, he has an assistant (antevasi). This last point is of interest since this is in contrast to the rajaka and the nahapita both of whom have putta (son) working for or instead of them.