CHINESE RELIGION AND RURAL COHESION
29
abstinence. The administrative lodges of such sects are called vegetarian halls like the lay institutions of Buddhism and whenever possible were residential. Sectarians I know overseas reckon some sort of monastic institution with supervision to be necessary for members practising the abstinences at least, and for work for religious examinations. Members might live in such halls on an occasional basis however, until they reach higher rank, and it is said this was the practice whenever possible in China also.
Below the lowest administrative centre members were organized round masters who recruited them to the religion and who possessed at least the lowest degree in the examination system. For vegetarian sects there were whenever possible vegetarian halls for "families" in the sect. Such halls appear to have existed occasionally in towns, where they sometimes passed as Buddhist establishments of the same name, and in the rural areas dotted round the countryside. Photographs of "ancestral" vegetarian halls I have seen in present day premises of sects in Singapore and Hong Kong often show them situated in lonely mountain regions. Their position, together with the secrecy with which sects had to operate, must have made communication with administrative centres difficult and infrequent. There were some non-vegetarian sects of this same religion of Hsien-t'ien Ta Tao in the nineteenth century (and in this century more non-vegetarian groups appeared, to attract more "modern" persons), which claim to have had lodges for members below the lowest administrative level but I have little information on their location and organization in the rural area. Members and organizational centres of the sects then appear to have been grouped in several ways: within an administrative area all members and the "family" organizations to which they belonged were grouped round an administrative lodge or hall; and within the area also, "kinsmen" were grouped round "family" halls wherever possible, the halls themselves being further grouped round “ancestral” vegetarian halls or lodges. The former type of grouping was activated for sectarian observances of various kinds, and the latter type of groupings for social celebrations and other activities of a "family" kind.
As a result largely of suppressive activities by the State, however, many of the vegetarian sects of Hsien-t'ien Ta Tao had, by the latter part of the nineteenth century, broken down to "family"