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of the kind in which members of the actual family participate: members attend each other's birthdays, anniversaries of death, and so on, and visit back and forth among the various vegetarian halls in the "family" group on such occasions. Membership, then, provides real social satisfactions as well as security.
But a further attraction of vegetarian halls, which is offered by the sect only, is rank. The inmates of halls of Hsien-t'ien Tao differ in one important sense from those of the Buddhist faith. Buddhist halls are a fairly late development in the religion and were built to house lay-members of the faith: individuals not wishing to take the full vows of the clergy but wishing to live a life of abstinence. Halls of Hsien-t'ien Tao, however, exist not only for lay-members, although many of the inmates hold no office or rank in the religion; they exist also, and more importantly, for those who have taken religious degrees and hold rank. It is for such rank that special religious tasks are necessary and they include Ch'an Buddhist type meditationary activities and Taoist exercises for breath circulation and control. It is reckoned that such persons need special living facilities for their purpose and the majority of the sect's rank-holders live in vegetarian halls at least on an occasional basis: men as well as women.
Rank in the sect is undoubtedly an attraction to many of the unattached women residents of the halls of Hsien-t'ien Tao. Rank-holders do not shave their heads as do the Buddhist clergy, or wear special robes, except for certain ceremonials, and like the lower members of the sect they refer to themselves as "laymen". They do, however, distinguish non-rank-holders, using the term hu-tao: "helpers of the way (sect)," for them. Rank-holders may have a good deal of responsibility for teaching and spreading the religion. You may be surprised to know that there are amahs, occupying a humble position in secular society, who are, in their religious life, rank-holders enjoying not only the respect, but also the obedience of many other women, to whom they might be religious "masters". This brings us to the question of the religious beliefs of Hsien-t'ien Tao and what, more precisely, it is a sect of.
[1.
AFFILIATIONS AND BELIEFS OF Hsien-T'ien Tao
Hsien-t'ien Tao is one of a large group of sects tracing themselves either to a common pair of founders, a monk and layman