ple (Ch’en, 1964: 265–266, 299–300). The famous Hua-tu temple in Chang-an
during the T’ang dynasty was fabulously wealthy; it made donations to the
poor, but accepted so many donations that it was able to make large loans and
investments, and lay administrators embezzled sums to make private fortunes.
Monasteries were also important in trade. The Ching-tu monastery in Tun-
huang on the Central Asian trade route (about 920 c.e.) received half its
income from interest on loans, another third from revenue from temple lands
and rents of its oil presses (Ch’en, 1964: 266–267). In the large monasteries,
wealth not needed for consumption or charity was typically put in the hands
of a monastic agent who was charged with organizing trade caravans or
otherwise investing it and returning a profit. Monastic wealth was transformed
into industrial production and technology (Needham, 1965: 400–403). Big
monasteries acquired water mills, which they leased to private businesses or
operated themselves. These mills were sources of large profits, and during the
T’ang were often objects of conflict with the government over irrigation rights
or exemption from taxation.
To this intensive growth of the big monastic property holders around the
chief administrative cities was added the extensive growth of local market
relations in the rural countryside. The vehicle for this market spread was a
new wave of popular theistic Buddhism. Most prominent was the Pure Land
sect of Amitabha (Amida). There had been earlier worshippers of popular
Buddhist deities; but from 530 through about 680 there appeared a much
larger movement of simplified Buddhism promising rebirth in the Western
Paradise simply by reciting the holy name. Its appearance at this time coincided
with the economic reorganization of society. Partly owing to the stimulus of
the larger monasteries, rural production was beginning to break out of local
isolation, estate autarky, and direct government appropriation of surplus, and
to develop rural market networks. Small Buddhist temples sprang up in this
newly dynamic environment, and contributed in turn to expanding networks
of travel and trade as well as to the spread of cultural capital. The wildfire
spread of a simplified Buddhism in this situation marked the first penetration
of a universalistic religion into a truly mass market in China.
As the centralized state and secular economy took hold, Buddhist or-
ganizations lost their economic centrality but remained useful in economic
maneuvering. The aristocracy would nominally give land to a temple in order
to evade taxation, while retaining use of it through provisions of the gift. The
great urban monasteries and those surrounding the capital became fabulously
wealthy. At the other end of the scale, small village temples and rural monas-
teries were ill endowed, and staffed by poorly educated monks from the local
peasantry.
During its height in the Northern and Southern dynasties and the T’ang,
278 • (^) Intellectual Communities: Asian Paths