Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History

[Buddhist Monastic Economy: The Jisa Mechanism]: CommentAuthor(s): George MurphySource: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Jul., 1961), pp. 439-442Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/177663 .

Accessed: 08/05/2014 10:35

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Cambridge University Press and Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History are collaborating withJSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Comparative Studies in Society and History.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 10:35:47 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

COMMENT

Professor Miller adds more information to help build up a knowledge of how Lamaist monasteries have functioned in the recent past.1 Such monas- teries performed (and in some cases still perform) not only religious and social functions but political and economic ones. As regards their internal financial systems, they seem to have had similar organizations all of which varied somewhat according to local environments. But Professor Miller com- ments on one common thread: the jisa system, and appraises its significance for the original spread of Inner Asian monasticism, for the fluctuations in fortunes of individual monasteries, and for the economy as a whole.

These are interesting questions and it is necessary to recognise the pio- neering work done in answering them. Yet some reservations seem in order about the answers. Dr. Miller stresses the decentralised nature of monastic finance and attributes this to religious doctrinal needs. But perhaps he over- draws his picture. Mongolian monasteries do seem to have been more closely controlled by the Chinese during the Ch'ing period, and this may have led to closer control by the monastery superiors over financial matters. Whatever the case in Bhutan and Sikkim, in Tibet as in Mongolia it seems clear that the monastery superiors controlled financial matters and monastic treasurers.2 Thus the jisa system must be viewed within the framework of monastic finance as a whole. Essentially what Professor Miller is concerned with is a system of decentralized treasuries (jisa), the discovery of which may have been as important to Inner Asia as that of double-entry bookkeeping in the

1 See also Lt. G. C. Binsteed, "Life in a Khalkha Steppe Lamasery", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 23 (1914); B. B. Baradin, "Buddhist Monasteries", in Ocherki Istorii Buriat-Mongol'skogo Naroda, ed. M. N. Bogdanov (Verkne Udinsk, 1926); Her- mann Consten, "Denominations of Monasteries in Outer and Inner Mongolia", and "The Secular Administration of Mongolian Monasteries and their Shabinars", Col- lectanea Commissionis Synodalis, 12 (1939). R. J. Miller, The Socio-Political and Economic Aspects of the Monastery in Inner Mongolia, unpublished doct. diss. (Uni- versity of Washington, 1955), and Monasteries and Culture Change in Inner Mongolia (Wiesbaden, 1959); A. Pozdneev, Mongoliia i Mongoli, I (St. Petersburg, 1896), and II (St. Petersburg, 1898); G. Ts. Tsybikov, A Buddhist Pilgrim to the Holy Places of Tibet; Dairies kept from 1899-1902, Translated from the Russian by Roger Shaw, for the Human Relations Area Files (New Haven, 1952-53); H. H. Vreeland 3rd, Mongol Community and Kinship Structure, Human Relations Area Files (New Haven, 1954). 2 On this see Tsybikov, op. cit., p. 282 ff.

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 10:35:47 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

West. Generally each monastery had a treasury3 for the major resident reincarnation which supported him and some few other minor objects of expenditure. The monastery as a whole had a treasury to look after the basic endowment of buildings and land. Specific monastic departments had treas- uries to finance their needs. In addition special endowments might be set up with specified persons as treasurers to perform specific religious functions in the way Dr. Miller describes. But while some treasuries united laymen and monks in fulfilling joint religious ends others were clearly oriented to main- taining the monastic collectivity as such and it seems artificial to make distinctions between the types of treasuries.

Treasurers were appointed by monastic officials, were subject to sanctions for performance of duties, and might gain status and personal wealth in the performance of their duties. Essentially a farm system was used; the treasurer could speculate with the funds entrusted to him so long as he kept the capital intact and fulfilled all the customary patterns of expenditures from his treasury. Dr. Miller shows clearly that the monastic superiors were intimately involved in the direction of financial policy, that is, in finding sources for funds and so on.

In Tibet monks who had failed in their religious vows may frequently have occupied positions which involved heavy administrative or financial burdens as they were essentially free from religious obligations.4

As generally monks were not supported by the monastery but only received customary distributions of food and cash at specified periods or when alms- givers financed noncustomary distributions, they made no great claim on monastic funds. In one area at least all monastic treasuries were a source of periodic customary distributions.5 While the accounts of various treasuries may not have been united in a single monastic account book, the treasuries of the resident reincarnation and of the monastery were handled by the same treasurer, and it has been asserted, again in one area only, that all funds were mutually self-sustaining so that transfers between them were possible.6

As Inner Asia tended to use real commodities as a store of wealth rather than money, the system of decentralized treasuries overcame the physical problems in storing, guarding and investing stocks or goods belonging to the

3 Historic cases of formation of communities (sangha) are intimately tied with forma- tion of monasteries; in other words, the objective of the collectivity known as a sangha was to found monastic communities. Robert B. Ekvall has pointed out to me that in general while a chief lama (emanation body) had a special identification with a partic- ular monastery, there were a number of other reincarnations in any large monastery, each with their own establishment and treasury. 4 These monks were known as Ban Log (priest rebels). See Robert B. Ekvall, Three Categories of inmates within Tibetan Monasteries-Status and Function (unpublished manuscript). 5 Vreeland, p. 100. 6 Vreeland, p. 97. This again may have been quite peculiar to the Narobanchim temple area although there seems no good a priori reason why this should be the case.

440 GEORGE MURPHY

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 10:35:47 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

monastery. It devolved responsibility and spread risks associated with unscrupulous treasurers.

Dr. Miller sees religious connotations as paramount in the adoption of this system, but the economic and religious aspects of the system are not essentially contradictory. From an economic viewpoint the system was highly practical; it could be rationalized ideologically. However it is interesting to speculate whether the synthesis between religious and economic needs had been quite as painless in earlier Buddhist times.

In any case once we view monasteries as collectivities with given ends, and the financial system as means to implement those ends, it seems clear that the system of decentralized treasuries, like double entry bookkeeping, was merely a vehicle and not a cause of change. The monastic superiors tending monastic property and attempting to transform periodic and uncertain incomes into permanent endowments, the nyerba trying to swell individual funds for per- sonal but also religious motives are the entrepreneurs of Inner Asia.

Did the spread of monasticism, tapping the economic resources of Inner Asia, have a positive or negative effect on the economy of the area? Dr. Miller's view seems to be that it was parasitic.7 This is a view which many other experts have taken, and if we survey recent monastic life there seems ground for it, on first sight. There is evidence of misdirection of social savings into private fortunes by corruption and bribery, through the sale of positions and degrees within monasteries. Funds were disbursed in con- spicuous religious consumption or monument building which might have gone to capital investment. There was loss of male manpower to the economy, and influence on the demographic characteristics of the population by way of changed fertility rates. Social abilities were trapped within the religious hierarchy.

But the monasteries financed by their system of decentralized accounts had positive aspects. They brought some social order and peace to Inner Asia and provided sanctuary for persons and for goods. They concentrated capital and acted as primitive banks. They facilitated travel and trade by their better protected caravans which cheapened transport costs, and by offering hospitality to travellers. Their poorer inmates had to produce com- modities to support themselves and in areas of nomadism, for instance, it is not hard to believe that superior skills were handed down within monasteries. As only a small portion of the support of a monk came from monastic funds, the rest except for the fortunate few had to come from labor. Tsybikov speaks of the attraction of the monastic sector: exemption from taxes and the fact of being subject only to the administrations of their monasteries. "But", he continues, "stem reality and the continual struggle for existence brings the poor monks back to their kinsmen to help in the cultivation of the

7 But see R. J. Miller, The Socio-Political and Economic Aspects of the Monastery in Inner Mongolia, p. 230.

441 COMMENT

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 10:35:47 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

GEORGE MURPHY

fields or to look for other income." 8 Monasteries for instance in recent times helped encourage agriculture in nomadic areas albeit for prospective returns.9 Monastic life did bring some improvement in learning, medicine and law. It provided avenues of social ascent for the ambitious and gave wider in- tellectual perspectives to those who had the wish and the ability to profit from them. It provided some forms of public support in some areas although in this the record seems slender. Even the monastic effect on demographic characteristics was not entirely negative for it helped to stabilize populations and prevented populations from pressing to the edge of subsistence.

The modern picture of the "traditional underdeveloped economy" is far from static and perhaps even allows for periodic advances in real income and periods of decline. Future research may show that periods of reform in the Lamaist religion, by the Tibetan reformer Tsongkapa for instance, may have also been periods of general economic advance promoted by the church. Is there any analogy in Inner Asian history to the way in which the Cistercians and Premonstratensians helped to drain the Flemish polders and to clear the wastes of Eastern Germany? It seems necessary to leave room, in present formulations about the area, for such historical possibilities.

GEORGE MURPHY

Stanford University

8 Tsybikov, op. cit., p. 151. 9 Pozdneev, op. cit., I, p. 38, describes a case where the local church authorities ousted Chinese to promote agriculture among the Outer Mongols as a source of profit (the Mongols were shabinar or subjects of the monastic unit).

442

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 10:35:47 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions