Students of Chinese Buddhism all know that traditionally Buddhist establishments involved themselves very much in economic activities, and both monks and nuns possesed personal properties. In fact，monastic economy had become a popular theme for modern scholars of both Chinese Buddhism and Chinese economic history. However，it seems to me that these scholars have all ignored the fact that both of the above-mentioned phenomena, i.e. those of monastic economy and the clerics' personal wealth, flagrantly violated the regulations laid down by the Indian Buddhists. According to the Vinaya, not only are the clerics not allowed to touch any kind of money，they also are not allowed to be involved in commercial transactions. Alms collecting is their only means of livelihood (the Sanskrit term Bhiksu 比丘 simply means 'begger'). Why should members of the Chinese Monastic Order have strayed from their sacred monastic rules even after the different versions of Vinaya had already been translated and put into practice?
In my opinion，that had something to do with the conflict between the cultures of India and China. In India, the society viewed the Buddhist Bhiksus as a kind of 'holy men' and laymen would gladly give alms to them and thereby gain their blessings. Under this tradition，the Indian monks and nuns happily survived.
In China, on the other hand，people tended to look down on beggars. Even though the Chinese faithful believed that giving alms to support the clerics was a good way of accumulating one's religious merits for eventual salvation，they would find the idea hard to stomach that a monk or nun whom they revered should come to their doors and collect alms every day a pauper. Instead，they would donate a large amount of money or a piece of forming land to an individual priest or to an establishment so that the clerics could have some property as a source of income.
Lest they should offend their donors, members of the Monastic Order reluctantly accepted donations, violating the Indian trandition. Since then，the monastic catering system was established and clerics were no longer sent to beg for food. As the catering system mainly depended upon the harvest of the monastic estate，abbots of monasteries or nunneries had to acquire fertile fields and groves in order to gurantee the supplies of their institutes. Gradually ，a foundation entitle' Wu-chin Tsang 無盡藏 'or 'Inexhaustible Treasury 'was set up at each establishment to manage the monies and other materials that people had donated to the institute, or crops harvested from the monastic estate.
Since the establishment of the above-mentioned treasury，members of the monastic Order began to organise many religious and social welfare activities as a means of attracting people to Buddhism. After the social welfare activities had gradually developed into the traditional welfare activities of the Monastic Order，the monasteries and nunneries would have to make their Inexhaustible Treasuries really 'Inexhaustible'. Under these circumstances, they extended their financial activities into commercial transactions or even got involve
