四分律刪繁補闕行事鈔 3.110

3.110

Tenth, explaining the miscellaneous procedures for dividing property. If someone dies at a private estate temple, or while serving as an emissary for the saṃgha and overseeing affairs at an estate, if there are family members or bhikṣus guarding it, the heavy property goes to the deceased's original temple, and the light property is divided according to those present; the bhikṣuṇī saṃgha may not share in it. Even if bhikṣus from nearby come to take the heavy property, it should not be given to them, as it is not the Buddha's correct regulation. If the deceased had no permanent dwelling place, but wherever there is a permanent dwelling, the nearest [monastery] takes it altogether (if the temple lacks saṃgha regulations, they also may not take it). If there are no bhikṣus guarding and administering it, the procedure is the same as that for a layperson's house. The Dharmaguptaka Vinaya states: If a bhikṣu dies in a layperson's house without a dwelling place, and there is a faithful dānapati there, that person should record and take charge of this property; if members of the five assemblies come first, it should be given to them; if none come, it should be sent to the bhikṣus of a nearby saṃghārāma. Based on this text, if bhikṣus and bhikṣuṇīs arrive together, depending on which assembly [the deceased] belonged to when dying, each takes their own; they may not divide this property together. For one's own school, it is also not necessary to add formal ritual procedures; one directly gathers it up, unlike the case of living together where one calmly performs formal ritual procedures. Heavy property is evaluated as above, depending on proximity according to circumstances. If one arrives at a layperson's house and knows there is property of the deceased, one must take hold of it and form the intention that it belongs to oneself for it to be valid; merely seeing it does not secure it. Even if one takes it in hand, if the layperson gathers it for themselves, then it is already definitively belonging to the laity, constituting stealing from the saṃgha, and one may not take it back by force; one should exhort and instruct them to give it to the saṃgha so they incur no karmic retribution (the saṃgha may receive it as property of a layperson). The Mahāsāṃghika-vinaya states: If a bhikṣu travels carrying another's robes, and the owner of the robes dies, and he then individually accepts the robes without giving them to the bhikṣus within the same boundary, it is a duṣkṛta (according to the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya, it is invalid: bhikṣus were present, but he had no perception of them). If after performing the karman one measures the shadow, fearing that guest bhikṣus might come, one should ascertain whether it is before or after the karman (meaning that when the boundary gathering the saṃgha is large, one does not know whether there are bhikṣus or not). In the Vinaya: If there are bhikṣus present, but one has no perception of them and divides robes as a separate saṃgha, it is invalid.