Bière et bouddhisme : la consommation de boissons alcoolisées dans les monastères de Dunhuang aux VIIIe-Xe siècles

In the Buddhist tradition, abstinence from alcohol is generally one of the rules for monks and lay devotees. Surprisingly, the Dunhuang monasteries' accounts, a treasure trove of raw data on the material conditions of life in the monastic communities, show ample expenses for buying or producing alcoholic beverages. The consumption of these drinks took place at the community level in a variety of circumstances. From these accounts, it is possible to measure quantitatively the extent of this drinking, not only among the ordinary monks but throughout the whole of the monastic hierarchy. From the same documents we can also deduce that a significant portion of the beverages was brewed inside the monasteries. But we also find the activity of specialized brewing enterprises, run by laymen, for which the monasteries were both the main customers and the providers of the grain used to brew the alcohol. All year long, the opportunities for drinking were numerous: meagre banquets related to collective works, traditional celebrations (e.g., solstices, lunar new year), as well as big Buddhist festivals (e.g., the eighth day of the second month, Avalambana). In addition to festive use, the alcoholic beverages were also a form of payment. Moreover, alcohol was drunk in various non-Buddhist rituals in which the monks participated. The only restriction that we can detect is that the alcoholic beverages seem not have played a role in specifically Buddhist ceremonies. Although the situation may have been different in the rest of China, it appears that in Dunhuang the monasteries and lay society lived in such a state of symbiosis that the monks accepted practices that were foreign to or even antithetical to Buddhist religious principles. This article also describes what the alcoholic beverages were like. A document (P. 2763) is unique in listing the precise composition of some vatfuls of beer. Since the beverages were made from cereal (millet, corn, barley) fermented with the addition of yeast, the word "beer, " in a broad sense, is suggested as a good translation for the rather vague Chinese term jiu used in the manuscripts.