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MARJORIE TOPLEY
But there might be factors connected with temple organization even in multi-lineage villages which could make for disruption. Where there were several wealthy individuals from different families competing for influence through the organization, quarrels over management of temple property might arise.2 In villages with large populations or with much social differentiation a number of temples might be built also to gods specialising in their various interests. Where local gods, or rather their temples, had nothing to do with each other's affairs (Hsiao gives an example from Shantung of two temples, one patronized mainly by rural scholars and another by farmers) they need not compete.22 A village might be divided into sections at least for some organizational purposes. But when temples offered gods and facilities appealing to the same sorts of persons rivalry and competition might occur over funds and members, unless they agreed to divide their areas of recruitment.
If promoters and managers were concerned with secular activities in the main, who organized the ritual affairs of such temples? Much of popular Chinese worship is of course performed alone, but in some areas, notably Fukien, there were spirit-medium cults (the god offering advice through the medium), and everywhere there were festivals for gods, in some cases several in a year. People in trouble also sometimes engaged in occasional rites involving popular gods and goddesses and might need special arrangements and specialist attentions. Cult organizers are described in the literature as "predatory elements": that is, not members of the regular peasantry.23 Some might have been members of the dislocated peasantry living outside villages, who saw a chance to improve their economic position; others, Taoist priests, of the kind who lived in their own homes and engaged in religion sometimes as a part-time occupation (see below); and still others the kind of persons associated with secret societies and religious sects. At any rate, we know such temples were sometimes borrowed as premises for secret societies, and temples just outside villages sometimes became meeting places for thieves and bandits.
The State believed that temple festivals offered opportunities for secret heretical groups to plan their insurrections and when evidence that this was the case came to light popular festivals were banned.24 Sometimes those promoting religious activities