34
MARJORIE TOPLEY
Under what circumstances might sects expand and include numbers of the ordinary peasantry? Did they ever include members of the local gentry or enjoy support of a whole village? The Nien is said to have recruited whole communities when getting ready to rebel.43 De Groot notes that when all villagers were members of a sect a piece of white cloth was used by the village as a mark of distinction.44
Rebellions and local disturbances initiated by sects appear to have taken place when economic conditions in the countryside worsened and local officials were at their most oppressive. Some sects clearly aimed mainly at the poor. One I know provided charms which when eaten were supposed to have overcome hunger for several months. In times of extreme poverty and oppression the organization of villages might have been weakened. The interests of village leaders and ordinary peasants might draw closer to each other in such conditions and also to those of the dislocated peasantry.
The objects of most religious rebellions was not to change the social order but purge the government of unvirtuous elements and sometimes change the ruling dynasty. Local village leaders in times of stress might also have desired this object. It seems that some organizations even attracted leaders of large mono-lineage villages. In times of disaster it must have been difficult to maintain a strong lineage organization to support the ancestral hall association with wealth. And other villages seeing their powerful landlords weakened might have taken advantage of the situation to resist their control. The Nien and the Eight Diagrams Sect are both said to have aided villages in inter-village fights (ultimately increasing their dominance over the villages concerned).45 The Eight Diagrams sect is said in fact to have risen as a result of antagonisms among village communities. Leaders of large lineage villages were made leaders of some organizations.46
One Nien head is said to have been leader of a "clan" composed of a thousand families, allying his village with more than ten others (his exact "leadership" status in the kin-group is not very clear, however).47 But the Nien was careful to preserve village leaders in its organization and this brought its own problems of expansion. The interests of various communities and local village heads inhibited the build up of centralized control over large areas by the Nien.