Does the Tang Priest learn from the scriptures by alms? How much does it cost him to learn from the west?

When watching the last two episodes of The Journey to the West, many people couldn't understand why even the Tathagata was so greedy for money and ordered his disciples to charge Tang Priest and his disciples a high service fee for copying documents. The Tathagata's explanation is that although he is a Buddhist disciple, he must charge fees so that future generations can spend money, and the more expensive the better.

Fiction belongs to fiction. In reality, Master Xuanzang not only didn't make a living by begging for alms on his way to Tianzhu to learn Buddhist scriptures, but also spent a lot of money. Influenced by novels and film and television dramas, many people not only misunderstood Tang Priest's scriptures, but also had naive ideas about the whole Buddhist ecology at that time.

The cost of seeing a Tang priest in a temple.

When Xuanzang went to Nalanduo Temple at great pains, he wanted to get the scriptures he wanted from here. According to the convention, Xuanzang needs to "donate" a certain amount of property to the temple. So how much did Xuanzang donate to this temple?

In addition to donating 50 gold coins and 65,438+0,000 silver coins to this temple, the Tang priest also donated four silk embroidered Buddhist flags, two tapestries, two sets of vestments and some pearls and agates.

Judging from these precious gifts, Xuanzang's trip to the Western Heaven is definitely not a four-person master, but a well-equipped luxury team.

Many readers believe that the reason why Tang Priest gave so much money to Nalanduo Temple was to copy other people's scriptures. As for other temples, they can't be said to be as popular as arranging cheerleaders, at least they can't ask the monks of the Tang Dynasty for money.

However, the reality is that every time the Tang Priest hangs tin in the temple, he must first present precious gold and silver gifts to the Buddha before he can study and rest there. At that time, besides gold and silver, silk was also hard currency.

Many people don't know that in the Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui and Tang Dynasties, as Buddhism reached its peak in history, Buddhist children also became the richest and most powerful group.

Look at the seven treasures of Buddhism: gold, silver, diamonds, red coral, colored glasses, red pearls, amber, agate, musk and other items, all of which are high-end luxury goods. Many so-called relics are not the remains of the Buddha after his death, but the magic weapon of Buddhism carefully crafted by these luxuries.

In that era when copper was the most valuable, Buddhists possessed a lot of copper in the empire.

Therefore, whenever there is an economic crisis in the empire, there will be a "forbidden Buddha movement." In addition to preventing Buddhism from becoming too powerful, the main purpose of this is to obtain the wealth owned by temples.

At that time, Buddhism was not only a powerful tool for emperors to rule the people, but also an important means to shape their glorious image.

For example, Wu Zetian made herself the incarnation of the future Buddha (Maitreya Buddha) just before she ascended the throne, and built temples and grottoes after she ascended the throne. Emperor Wendi of Sui Dynasty awarded the relics to the major temples in China as the emperor to consolidate the political power.

The temples in Sui and Tang Dynasties not only owned a lot of land and property, but also owned a large number of slaves and Buddhist portals.

How rich were the temples in the Sui and Tang Dynasties?

Readers who like to study Japanese history will find that during the Warring States Period in Japan, Japanese temples could even establish their own political power.

China established a religious Taoist regime in Sichuan in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, but the Buddhist power reached its peak in the Sui and Tang Dynasties. More than 480 ancient temples were left in the Southern Dynasties, and countless pagodas were shrouded in wind and rain.

Because Buddhism at this time has integrated the essence of Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism, coupled with the blessing of the royal family behind it, the wealth of Buddhism has reached an amazing level.

At this time, some temples not only owned thousands of hectares of fertile land, but also thousands of slaves and Buddhists worked for them.

Not only that, temples in the Sui and Tang Dynasties also operated accommodation, oil extraction, mills, tea and other most profitable businesses at that time. Tea, an addictive drink, began to rise in monasteries because it helps meditation.

Water mill and oil mill, these mechanized workshops with huge investment at that time, had the most temples besides the big manor owners.

Look at the large temples, pagodas, grottoes and Buddha statues built during the Sui and Tang Dynasties. If we change the cost into today's figures, it will be billions and billions of investments.

Where did the money come from? Part of it is sponsored by royalty, part is donated by local tyrants and landlords, but more is the tribute from the general public and the operation of the temple itself. In a Buddhist business in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, only one Buddha nail sold millions of copper coins.

At that time, many believers cut off their hands, stamped their feet and cut their fingers to make blood sacrifices in order to show their piety to the Buddha. Because this kind of behavior is too bloody, just like the Ming Dynasty forbade civilians to castrate themselves privately, the imperial ban was used to prevent believers from self-mutilation.

By the way, until liberation, there were dozens of acres of fertile land and several oxen in a temple in a village in my hometown.

Like us laymen, the monasteries where Zhu Yuanzhang became a monk in the Ming Dynasty not only allowed monks to marry, but also had fierce competition. Like Xu Sanduo in The Taoist Down the Mountain, Zhu Yuanzhang was assigned to the poorest place to die.

If we finish talking about the ecological environment of temples in Sui and Tang Dynasties, you can easily understand the cost of Tang Priest's learning from the scriptures.

However, since the Tang Dynasty, the center of Buddhism has moved from India to China, and since then it has split into several major factions, such as Zen, Legalism, Tantric, Huayan, Pure Land, Fahua and Xianshouzong.

If this comparison is made, the huge expenses of Master Xuanzang in those years are also worthwhile.