Where does the wealth of temples and Taoist temples come from? You may think of "sesame oil money" first, yes. Even now, "sesame oil money" is still one of the incomes of temples and Taoist temples. But in ancient times, this "sesame oil money" could only account for a fraction of the total income. The main wealth of Buddhist temples is a large area of land. How many can there be? According to historical records, in the early years of the Tang Dynasty, Tang Gaozu Li Yuan once gave a one-time gift to Shaolin Temple 100 hectares of fertile land. How big is a hundred hectares? This area is basically one thirteenth that of Chang 'an. Moreover, this is only a reward, and the rewards, large and small, have not been counted in the future. In today's words, Shaolin Temple is a big landlord.
Not only the emperor was generous, but other princes and nobles were also quite generous to the temple Taoist temple. People are not playing empty, they are all supported by real money. For example, Quanzhen once had a palm-teaching leader who resigned and went to a place called Yunzhou to build a worship palace. Princes, nobles and believers from all directions donated money to support him. When Empress Dowager Cixi passed Yunzhou, she also sent someone to send money. The decoration fee paid by Master Xu alone is fifty taels of gold. So you see, it's no wonder that there are many Shaolin schools and Quanzhen schools, and there are more people and more money.
The property of temples and Taoist temples is not just fields. Can you imagine the market in the temple? This happened in the Northern Song Dynasty. The largest temple in the capital is called Dasuoguo Temple, which is open to the public five times a month. What are you doing? For the people to trade in the temple, just like the market, the scale was the largest in Beijing at that time. According to historical records, every time Suoguo Temple opens, nuns from various monasteries will rush to Beijing to participate in this market like others and sell the finished products made by nuns by hand, such as jewelry, hats and so on. During the Southern Song Dynasty, there was a very famous luxury in Jiangxi called lotus yarn, which was woven by a nun in Lotus Temple. Because of its lightness, it has become a popular fabric for making summer clothes. Although people outside the temple can also make this kind of lotus yarn, it is not as good as a nun in the Lotus Temple. Therefore, the lotus yarn produced by Lotus Temple is 20% to 30% more expensive than others, which is really unacceptable.
In addition to land property, remuneration and operating income, temples and Taoist temples have also set foot in the traditional financial industry. What's going on here? As we all know, in ancient times, if the family was short of money, they could take their valuables to the pawnshop to pawn, just like the current pledge loan. It was the temples in the Northern Wei Dynasty that started this kind of loan. Mortgage loans and credit loans provided by modern commercial banks are also provided by ancient temples, which are very advanced. Not only that, temples, like banks, can also save money. There is a story that there was a scholar in the Song Dynasty whose family was poor when he was a child, but an elder appreciated him very much, so he saved a sum of money for him to use when he participated in scientific research in the future. A sinologist studied the annual settlement report of a temple in Dunhuang and found that about one third of the economic income of Dunhuang temples came from borrowing.