In Gaomi Village, a suburb of Dongyang City, Qingzhou, several craftsmen are carving a Buddha statue, and it took them nearly a month to close to completing the Buddha statue, and when it is finally completed, it can be sold.

The wind of worshipping Buddha in the land of Qingqi is no less than that of Jiangnan, and many people make vows in order to make Buddha statues, and spontaneously form Yiyi to make statues. In order to save time, many Yiyi often pooled money to buy "finished products".

It is precisely because of the strong demand that it has become a lucrative industry to specialize in making Buddha statues for sale, and in Qingzhou, there are many such statue making organizations, which are called up by the owners and make profits by making Buddha statues every month.

In Qingzhou, most of the shapes of Buddha statues are fixed to several kinds, which is very conducive to mass production, and one of the Buddha statues is "Maitreya next to the statue".

Maitreya's next life comes from, according to Buddhist scriptures, Maitreya's life expectancy in Tushitian is 4,000 years old, and the time converted into an adult is 5.6 billion years.

After Maitreya's birth, the toiling masses of the world not only live happily, but also have the opportunity to be liberated, which is not intriguing for the people living in the dark world.

Although the Buddhist scriptures clearly stipulate that Maitreya will not be born until 5.6 billion years later, the people who have suffered a lot in the suffering are eager for Maitreya to come as soon as possible, so the belief in the next life soon replaced the belief in the upper life and became the mainstream of Maitreya's faith.

A standard-sized statue of Maitreya costs a lot, and a Yiyi needs to gather at least a hundred people to get together the cost of buying a Buddha statue, of course, if the Yiyi members are shy in their pockets, they can make the statue themselves in order to save money.

The composition of Yiyi, there are Yi Lord, Vena, Hua Lord, Yi Shi, Yi Zi, etc., Yi Zi is an ordinary member, each member to participate in Yi Yi, at least 300 to 400 copper coins, this is still the cost of Yi Yi himself to build a statue, if it is a direct purchase of finished products, you need to pay more copper coins.

In Qingzhou, ordinary people can earn about 30 yuan a day by working for people and selling labor, and in order to participate in the statue and make a vow, they have to spend 10 days of income.

In other words, these people served ten days of labor for the Yiyi led by the temple.

Even so, the enthusiasm of the people of Qingzhou to participate in the statue is still high, serving the government to serve the labor, not to mention the hard work is easy to ruin the family, and to serve the Yiyi service, you can ask for the blessing of the Buddha, why not?

Yiyi not only makes statues, but also builds towers, stone scriptures, stone rooms, temples, fasting, etc., a Yiyi is less than dozens of people, more than thousands of people, most of them are composed of ordinary people, secular bureaucrats, monks, Yiyi produced for the sake of statues, can last for more than ten years.

The Buddha statue will be made with a stone tablet with the names of all the members of the Yiyi on it, so that the Buddha can sense the devotion of the believers.

And with the finished Buddha statue, Yiyi has a short lifespan from birth to end, and can even make a profit: there is a blank space on the stone tablet of the Buddha statue, and those believers who have not joined Yiyi for some reason can spend money to engrave their names on the blank space of the stone tablet.

Such believers may not show up in Yiyi from its establishment to its dissolution, and will not participate in any activities of the Yiyi organization, but will only spend money to buy a name on the stone tablet, and generally speaking, it will be dominated by rich officials and wealthy businessmen.

Of course, in order to distinguish it from Yizi, the inscription of the person who spends money to engrave his name will be different, generally speaking, his name will be ranked after Yizi, and the text says, "On a certain day in a certain year, a certain month, a certain body of Buddha is bought with money, and a certain and such a person."

For example, when it was first established, there were 100 members, but due to various reasons, there were only 70 people left, so there will be a lot of blanks on the stone tablet.

For merchants selling finished Buddha statues, the production of stone tablets is exquisite, and it is necessary to consider that there will be people outside the members of Yiyi who will spend money to buy names, so it is necessary to leave enough blank space to engrave the names.

It is also necessary to consider that the decrease in the number of members of Yiyi has led to the invalidation of the inscription engraved in advance, and a loss of money has been lost in vain, so it is very important to contact Yiyi frequently and determine the list.

At this moment, the statue owner was talking to a young and emaciated monk, dressed in coarse cloth robes and tattered shoes, and looked not much different from an ordinary monk.

It is even more different from those temple owners with fat heads and big ears and oily faces.

"Lord Duyi, this list is no different from the last one."

"What doubts do you have about the Lord?"

"Well, I remember, it seems that a few people have already left Duyiyi." The image lord pointed to several names on the list and said, "The image lord is the person who is responsible for leading the statue building, and there is an image lord in Yiyi, and the person who specializes in making Buddha statues for sale is also called the image lord.

"Ah, these Tanyue have something to do at home, and they can't do their best for Yiyi for a while, it's okay, it's okay."

Like the lord glanced at the other party, there was some hesitation in his heart, this situation is not unprecedented, but it usually causes trouble, because if the names of those who pushed out of Yiyi halfway are engraved on the stele, it will attract the dissatisfaction of other members of Yiyi, because it is not fair.

Like the main business of the Buddha statue business, see more disputes, generally speaking, the lord of the city is too good to speak, want to be a good person in the end of the dilemma, can only smash the carved stone tablet, re-engrave a piece.

"Like the Lord's kindness, the poor Dao has received it, please engrave your name according to the list, don't worry."

The monks of this era, claiming to use more "poor roads" instead of "poor monks", like the lord saw that the other party had made up his mind, so he didn't say anything, this lord of the capital is not very old, but he is very experienced in presiding over the affairs of the city, he feels that the other party should have a way to calm down the criticism of the members of the Yiyi.

Yiyi, its leader is the lord of Yi, the deputy leader is generally Vena, and several Yiyi can constitute a larger Yiyi, called "Duyi Yi", its leader is the lord of Duyi, and the deputy leader is generally Duweina, and the person who can do the lord of Duyi should have some ability.

And this lord of the capital also acts differently from other monks, other temple monks will set up a longevity treasury, and put 'monks' mansion millet is usury, and this lord of the capital also sets up a longevity treasury, but it is not a usury.

In other words, this is a library of righteousness set up to allow Yiyi members to help each other and save emergencies.

The Yi people borrowed money and grain from the Changsheng Treasury, and it didn't matter if they couldn't afford it, just come to Yiyi to help them, unlike the monks in those temples, who sent some splashes to collect debts every month, making chickens and dogs jump, where is there a monk who has no quarrel with the world?

The two talked for a while, and then the lord of the city took his leave, and he walked on foot to the other end of the village, where there was now a fasting room, and the Dharma lord of his Yi was explaining the Buddhist scriptures to the people.

Buddhist scriptures are naturally popular in Qingzhou.

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