32 Taenzer
two daughters. Presumably the oldest offspring of the former were allowed to
marry. The youngest daughter—the third daughter—joined the clergy while
the head of a subunit, after his children had married, made an agreement with
his cousin about the division of their household and became a monastic. To
devote the end of ones life to religion was the only way for officials to leave
their post. Thus men were rather old already when they became monks. This
may be the reason for the high death rate of monks in the list mentioned above.
According to a fragment of a household register58 other factors must have
started to become prevalent during Tibetan rule. The registers of three families
are complete. The only surviving son of the Liang family had two sons and
two daughters, whereby one daughter became a nun. They had five bondser-
vants. To the Suo family eleven children were born. Two sons and possibly one
daughter stayed single, two sons and two daughters joined the clergy. They had
one bondservant. The history of the Guo family is quite complex. The head of
the family had a wife and a second wife. With his first wife he had three sons
and one daughter, they all married and had children themselves. The second
wife had two daughters—one married and one became a nun. They had five
bondservants; probably after the head of the family died two bondservants left
(were sold?) and his second wife joined the clergy. They did not split the family
nor did they choose a new head.
These registers show that the men did not join the clergy at the end of their
career, but when they were still young. From the large family, which was not
wealthy (only one bondservant), more young people joined the clergy than
from the other two families. One reason may have been the distribution of
fields. No more land may have been redistributed or newly allocated to the
families of the military units after the land reform in a rat year (possibly begin-
ning of 9th century) and to the civil units after the completion of a field count.
The household register—although small—suggests some population growth.
This may have resulted in the produce of the fields not being sufficient and no
funds to pay the pride price for wives for all sons being available (the average
pride price seems to have been 20 shi of grain); thus some became monks. But
what about women? The family had to pay for the certificate to join a monas-
tery, which was quite expensive—it cost one donkey and a cow;59 moreover,
58 S. 3287v, transliterated and discussed in: Yamamoto, Tatsuro, and Dohi Yoshikazu, ed.
Tun-huang and Turfan Documents Concerning Social and Economic History: II Census
Registers (A) Introduction and Texts (Tokyo: The Toyo Bunko, (A), 1985; (B) Plates, 1984),
text XC b–d, 92.
59 P. 3774 line 46, in Ikeda, “Monk Longzang,” 28.