Changing Relations 31
Province).52 This is a characteristic of the roll type Śatasāhasrikā Prajñāpārāmitā
sūtra. Rekong and Kuozhou are situated in the same region. According to the
list of temple peasants cited above the Chinese jiaoshou, a very high digni-
tary of the clergy called Liu, went to Kuozhou twice within four years. Thus an
exchange between Dunhuang and the Qinghai region took place already at the
turn of the eighth to the ninth century.
Between 794 and 818 the number of monks and particularly the number of
nuns started to rise. Although no list of enrolled monastics is extant for the end
of Tibetan rule, the number of nuns of Dacheng temple is known for the year
870—roughly 20 years after the establishment of local rule in Dunhuang. By
the end of the 9th century, the number of nuns had risen by 522 and the num-
ber of monks by 170 (see table 1).53 The reason for this development is not evi-
dent at first sight.
After joining the clergy a monk could keep his field and plant it, he could
also work on other people’s fields, he was allowed to keep his bondservants. He
probably could make a will.54 However, if he did not do so his servants together
with their belongings fell to the religious realm—and thereby to the Tibetan
Empire.55 A nun could keep her livestock and bondservants—it is unlikely that
she could keep her fields.56
The Chinese manuscript P. 377457 gives a good example of how parts of a
family joined the clergy. Two cousins lived in one household; one had one son
and three daughters. The other was head of a subunit (Chin. jiang) and had
52 He wrote P. tib. 1571, 1573, 1595, 1600, 1614, 1634, 1591 and read P. tib. 1556. All these scrip-
tures are marked as probably not originating in Dunhuang in Taenzer, Dunhuang Region
during Tibetan Rule. Iwao (Iwao, “Śatasāhasrikā-Prajñā-pārāmitā sūtra from Dunhuang”)
has substantiated my findings by looking at the physical structure of the paper. He came
to the conclusion that the roll type was written on paper, which was neither made in Tibet
nor in Dunhuang.
53 See the table 1 at the end of this article for a comparison of the lists.
54 There is no testament extant for the period of Tibetan rule, but for the time shortly after
the takeover by Zhang Yichao two testaments are extant (see below).
55 P. tib. 1079: transliterated and translated in Richardson, “An Early Judicial Document,”
149–166.
56 S. 5820+S. 5826 is a contract of the sale of a cow by a nun (published in Yamamoto, Tatsuro,
and Ikeda On ed. Tun-huang and Turfan Documents Concerning Social and Economic
History: III Contracts (A) Introduction and Texts (Tokyo: The Toyo Bunko, (A) 1987; (B)
Plates, 1986), text 257); P. tib. 1079 proves that nuns could keep bondservants (transliter-
ated and translated in Richardson, “An Early Judicial Document,” 149–166); there are no
grain loan contracts extant, which were concluded by nuns. As it was necessary to have
fields to plant to be able to get a grain loan it is likely that the fields stayed with the family.
57 Transliterated in Ikeda, “Monk Longzang,” 25–29.