26
MARJORIE TOPLEY
my knowledge of Hong Kong, to attract mainly men today (as lay members at least) and it may well have been a religion more popular with men as far as individual practices are concerned in traditional times also.
But there is one branch of Taoism not centred on monastic life: its members are (and were traditionally) professional priests living in their own homes, and not vegetarian or celibate. Like the Buddhist clerics, they are recruited through masters, have recorded genealogies (some of which I have seen in Singapore) and are grouped in pseudo-kinship relations with others, this relationship often forming the basis for teams performing rituals (as with the Buddhists). Such priests have often been part-time practitioners in the rural area, working when not acting in their priestly capacity, in generally poorly rewarded and low status occupations.
Some of the main activities of such priests in village life were the provision of rituals and ritual information for ordinary people and related to domestic affairs and problems in the main. They were also in demand from mutual aid associations using religious elements, those connected with trades and crafts for example, for conducting the periodic ballots for election of officers and participating in rituals during their festivals to patron gods; and they may have had a role also in promoting and organizing religious cults for villagers, perhaps some of those taking place in temples dedicated to popular gods. It seems unlikely, however, that they would figure significantly in any organization embracing both scholarly and non-scholarly members of rural society.
There were also certain Taoist societies having no connexion with priests of this kind and sometimes found at the village level. Some of those I have investigated overseas show in their records a line of descent through leaders going back to some Taoist sage, and they have their own preachers and organizers. Some concentrate on improving health and curing disease and drug addiction.32 The term Taoist and also Buddhist "society" or sect is often used rather loosely in the literature, however, to cover organizations using elements from such religions, but which were in fact syncretic. Some of these bodies were regarded as highly heretical by the State and known as "left doors". They occasionally called themselves Taoist or Buddhist to escape attention.
26
MARJORIE TOPLEY
my knowledge of Hong Kong, to attract mainly men today (as lay members at least) and it may well have been a religion more popular with men as far as individual practices are concerned in traditional times also.
But there is one branch of Taoism not centred on monastic life: its members are (and were traditionally) professional priests living in their own homes, and not vegetarian or celibate. Like the Buddhist clerics, they are recruited through masters, have re- corded genealogies (some of which I have seen in Singapore) and are grouped in pseudo-kinship relations with others, this relation- ship often forming the basis for teams performing rituals (as with the Buddhists). Such priests have often been part-time practi- tioners in the rural area, working when not acting in their priestly capacity, in generally poorly rewarded and low status occupations.
Some of the main activities of such priests in village life were the provision of rituals and ritual information for ordinary people and related to domestic affairs and problems in the main. They were also in demand from mutual aid associations using religious elements those connected with trades and crafts for example for conducting the periodic ballots for election of officers and participating in rituals during their festivals to patron gods; and they may have had a role also in promoting and organizing re- ligious cults for villagers, perhaps some of those taking place in temples dedicated to popular gods. It seems unlikely, however, that they would figure significantly in any organization embracing both scholarly and non-scholarly members of rural society.
There were also certain Taoist societies having no connexion with priests of this kind and sometimes found at the village level. Some of those I have investigated overseas show in their records a line of descent through leaders going back to some Taoist sage, and they have their own preachers and organizers. Some concent- rate on improving health and curing disease and drug addiction.32 The term Taoist and also Buddhist "society" or sect is often used rather loosely in the literature, however, to cover organizations using elements from such religions, but which were in fact syncre- tic. Some of these bodies were regarded as highly heretical by the State and known as "left doors". They occasionally called themselves Taoist or Buddhist to escape attention.
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