30 Taenzer
precious items such as white lead powder were sold for grain and on the other
hand how valuable one sūtra was (a farm-hand earned 180 shi grain a year).
There is one fragment of a legal manuscript 48 from which it can be con-
cluded that a person had donated a house and an orchard to a temple before
the land reform.
People of all walks of life donated. This can be seen in a manuscript in
which temple peasants, commoners and councillors, who presented oil to
Puguang temple, are recorded.49
2.2.2 Monks and Nuns
Before the Tibetans took over Eastern Central Asia, thirteen temples already
existed in the Dunhuang region with 310 nuns and monks affiliated to them.
This is evident from a Chinese manuscript dated 788.50 It is complete and not
only lists the names of Dunhuang’s temples but also the names and families
of their nuns and monks. After its completion the deaths were recorded up to
the ape (Chin. shen 申) year, which is four years later, 792. 13% of the monks
and 6.4% of the nuns died within this period. One nun and one monk trans-
ferred to the oasis of Ganzhou (甘州, present day Zhangye) East of Dunhuang,
one monk went to the oasis of Yizhou (伊州, present day Hami) North of
Dunhuang and of one nun it is only stated that she went East. No arrivals were
recorded. The Tibetan administration commissioned this register.
Once the units were established and the inhabitants were registered in a
military or civil unit it can be assumed that the Tibetan administration con-
trolled the movement of the monastics. Arrivals in Shazhou (Dunhuang)
coming from the oases of Suzhou (肅州, present day Jiuquan), Ganzhou and
Kuozhou had certificates issued by Tibetan dignitaries.51
Among the Dunhuang manuscripts are quite a few scriptures, which were
not written in Dunhuang. The monk Rekong Tsuglator (Tib. Reb kong Gtsug
la tor) who wrote and proofread scriptures originated from Yarmothang
(Tib. Dbyar mo thang, Reb kong, Chin. Tongren in present day Qinghai
48 S. 2228, text C.
49 IOL Tib J 794 transliterated and translated in Thomas, Tibetan Literary Texts, 109 and dis-
cussed in Taenzer, Dunhuang Region during Tibetan Rule, 248.
50 S. 2729 published in Ikeda On 池田温, Chūgoku kodai sekichō kenkyū 中國古代籍
帳研究 [Ancient Chinese Household Registers and Related Documents] (Tokyo: Institute
of Oriental culture, University of Tokyo, 1979), 502.
51 P. 5579 was written during the early period of Tibetan rule because the term sengtong
instead of jiaoshou is used and because among the signatories features the Tibetan prime
minister Zhang Trisumje (Tib. Zhang Khri sum rje, Chin. Qixiner).