“The Buddha said: when these scriptures were first completed, a bhiksu-saint took them down the mountain to the house of Elder Zhao in Sravasti and read them through once, keeping the living of that house safe and delivering its dead — and asked no more than three pecks and three pints of grain-gold for it. He thought at the time he had sold too cheap, and their descendants after them would go short of money.”

The Buddha's answer to being caught taking bribes is a story about undercharging. 舍衛國 is Sravasti, the city where the Buddha spent most of his teaching life. Its first character is read shè, a dwelling — not shě, to cast away, which is what the bare chain gives. 三斗三升米粒黃金 — three dǒu and three shēng of gold in grains like rice. The dǒu is a dry measure of about ten litres and the shēng a tenth of it, so this is roughly thirty-three litres of gold dust, and the Buddha's complaint is that it was not enough. 子孫, descendants. Its first character is read zǐ, the full word for a child, not the light ending it becomes in everyday compounds. And the sting is in the tail: because the saint charged too little, Elder Zhao's grandchildren will be poor.

“We knew the two venerables were demanding a present, and the Buddha knew it perfectly well, so we had no choice but to give them the purple-gold almsbowl Your Majesty had bestowed, and only then were the true scriptures with words in them handed down.”

佛祖明知 — and the Buddha knew it perfectly well. Four characters, dropped in without emphasis, and they are the sharpest thing anybody says in this chapter. The shakedown was not a lapse of supervision. It was known about. 欽賜紫金缽盂 — the purple-gold almsbowl granted by imperial favour. Taizong gave the Tang monk that bowl himself, fourteen years ago, at the send-off. The Tang monk is telling him to his face that he had to hand the emperor's own parting gift to a doorkeeper to get the goods released. 只得, had no choice but to.