CHINESE RELIGION AND RURAL COHESION
Sectarian Religion and the Rural Area
27
Some of the organizations referred to as sects in the literature were in fact religions in their own right. Their ideas were taken from both Buddhism and Taoism certainly, and they also used cosmological notions accepted by the State and the more scholarly members of society; but they often combined such elements in a way forming a distinct ideology of their own. Many were strongly messianic, looked forward to a millenium, and sometimes had secular, even political aims, connected with their ultimate religious goals.
The literature on such organizations suggests they had a regional distribution, although the evidence is not entirely clear because various names were used by one and the same body at different times or in different places, and some of them themselves ramified into sects.
Speaking generally, they appear to have been most active in the poorer parts of the rural area especially in regions with large dislocated populations. Szechuan was birth-place to several and was not only an area of scattered settlement but the land of much of the province was poor (perhaps a factor contributing to absence of nucleated settlement). They also operated a great deal in Anhwei, and on the borders of Honan, Shantung and Hopei. Exile appears sometimes to have been a factor in their extension to new areas. Some groups I studied in Singapore in the 1950's were brought down to village areas in Kwangtung, Kwangsi and Fukien leaders exiled from Honan in the mid-nineteenth century.
But when trying to visualize their operations at the rural level one realizes how thin information in the literature is on their activities in relation to communities of different type and size. Where were their lodges, what did they look like? Were their bases in villages, towns or the open country-side? If one of the more militant, the Nien, said to be an off-shoot of the White Lotus is any example, it appears they might change their base. At one phase in its development it operated from nests in the mountains and at another based itself on earthwall communities in Anhwei for strategic reasons.34 The Nien, however, might in fact have been a secret society type organization and not a religious sect. I will return to the question of secret societies presently.
CHINESE RELIGION AND RURAL COHESION
Sectarian Religion and the Rural Area
27
Some of the organizations referred to as sects in the literature were in fact religions in their own right. Their ideas were taken from both Buddhism and Taoism certainly, and they also used cosmological notions accepted by the State and the more scholarly members of society; but they often combined such elements in a way forming a distinct ideology of their own. Many were strongly messianic, looked forward to a millenium, and sometimes had secular, even political aims, connected with their ultimate religious goals.
The literature on such organizations suggests they had a re- gional distribution, although the evidence is not entirely clear because various names were used by one and the same body at different times or in different places, and some of them themselves ramified into sects."
Speaking generally, they appear to have been most active in the poorer parts of the rural area especially in regions with large dislocated populations. Szechuan was birth-place to several and was not only an area of scattered settlement but the land of much of the province was poor (perhaps a factor contributing to absence of nucleated settlement). They also operated a great deal in Anhwei, and on the borders of Honan, Shantung and Hopei. Exile appears sometimes to have been a factor in their extension to new areas. Some groups I studied in Singapore in the 1950's were brought down to village areas in Kwangtung, Kwangsi and Fukien
leaders exiled from Honan in the mid-nineteenth century.
But when trying to visualize their operations at the rural level one realizes how thin information in the literature is on their activities in relation to communities of different type and size. Where were their lodges, what did they look like? Were their bases in villages, towns or the open country-side? If one of the more militant, the Nien, said to be an off-shoot of the White Lotus is any example, it appears they might change their base. At one phase in its development it operated from nests in the mountains and at another based itself on earthwall communities in Anhwei for strategic reasons.34 The Nien, however, might in fact have been a secret society type organization and not a religious sect. I will return to the question of secret societies presently.
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