The problems of slack Buddhist disciplines caused by Tubo occupation and rule, such as alcohol drinking, eating meat, owning slaves, accumulating wealth, and even marrying wives, which existed widely in the current Buddhist world of Dunhuang, remained unsolved till the times of the late Tang Dynasty, the Five Dynasties and the early North Song Dynasty. In those days, besides such conventional practices as tonsuring the head, dressing in the monk’s robe, reading the Buddhist sutras and the like, the monks led a semiBuddhist and semisecular and priestly and nonpriestly life, which made little difference from secular masses. For the discipline of alcohol drinking, the temples around Dunhuang were not restrained by the discipline but tended to become slacker. The popularity of alcohol drinking among monks can be regarded as a prominent feature of the Buddhist world of Dunhuang’s secularizing tendency in the historical period of the late Tang Dynasty, the Five Dynasties and the early North Song Dynasty. The account of expenditure in alcoholic beverage in the Temple of Pure Land in the early North Song Dynasty, which was recorded in Documents S. 6452-3 and S. 6452-5, offers the primary sources for such a practice.

Buddhism; Dunhuang; culture of alcohol drinking; secularization