The alleged sex scandals involving the Shaolin Temple's abbot continued to attract public attention on Friday after the abbot's family denied he had a wife and children.

A whistle-blower accused the abbot Shi Yongxin of having two daughters with different mistresses but the abbot's mother in Anhui Province refuted the accusation and claimed that one of the alleged daughters is the abbot's nephew, according to the newspaper Chengdu Business Daily on Friday.

Shi Zhengyi, the whistle-blower, posted an article online earlier this week, saying Shi Yongxin (no relation) has two daughters, named Liu Mengya and Han Jia'en, who is now living with the abbot's mother.

The mother said that Shi Yongxin became a monk when he was a teenager and has neither been married nor children. She added that the family has never met Han while Liu is the daughter of another son.

Although the family denied their relationship with Han and her alleged mother Han Mingjun, the family's household registration papers, provided by the local residents' committee, show Han as a grandchild of the family, according to thepaper.cn.

Han Jia'en was born in April 2009 in Jiangdianzi county hospital in Anhui Province, according to the tip-off. Chengdu Business Daily cited local police source saying that the former head of the hospital has been taken away by the police for further investigation.

According to Shi Zhengyi's tip-off, Han Mingjun's real identity is Shi Yanjie, who is the vice-head of the Henan Provincial Buddhist Association. However, the association denied the claims, Chengdu Business Daily reported.

The religious authorities in Dengfeng, Henan, where the temple is located, released a statement on Friday, saying that it will investigate the scandal.

The statement came a day after the State Administration for Religious Affairs asked its branch in Henan to verify the accusations against the abbot.

Shi Zhengyi Friday sent the Global Times a new batch of evidence, including two supposed records of interrogations from the Zhengzhou police bureau in May and June 2004. In the records, a woman, surnamed Liu, claimed that she had sex with Shi Yongxin "a dozen times" before they had a quarrel over money. Liu added that she kept his semen as evidence.

Shi Zhengyi told the Global Times via an e-mail on Thursday night that he has been threatened but he would kept disclosing more information which he claimed to be true.

The credibility of Shi Zhengyi's claims and the materials he provided has not been made clear yet. He also refused to confirm weather Shi Yongxin is his real name, when reached by the Global Times previously. 

According to previous media reports, some 30 monks from the Shaolin Temple said that Shi Zhengyi is a former pupil of the abbot, named Shi Yanlu. Shi Yanlu quarrelled with the abbot and the tip-off was an act of revenge.

Shi Yanlu denied he is the whistle-blower but said he admired what Shi Zhengyi has done, thepaper.cn reported.

The scandal has not disturbed the daily routine of the abbot. The Beijing News reported that the abbot would lead nearly 100 monks for a kung fu exhibition in Thailand on August 2 as planned.