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MARJORIE TOPLEY
organization as their only method for organizing members. There are certainly some overseas today which still retain the patriarch type of organization but several are run only by "family heads" (chia-chang). Such "family" groups have also fragmented to form separate off-shoots of the religion.
There is evidence also that for at least some of the vegetarian sects of China the dangers of running their organization through vegetarian halls was well recognised: that although sometimes such halls existed as centres for administration, for ordinary members meetings were more normally conducted in their own homes. De Groot writing on the Lung-hua sect in the town of Amoy (this sect is also an off-shoot of Hsien-t'ien Ta Tao as I discovered from my researches) talks of sectaries meeting in each other's homes. Their vegetarian halls were rooms in private dwellings (this is still true of some of the "halls" in urban Hong Kong today but not all of them). He says, however, a patriarch lived in a residence which "may be something like a Buddhist convent".35
To what extent were ordinary members operating in their own homes residents of villages? Sects certainly appear to have operated in villages in this century. Several organizations found in villages of Ting Hsien, a district of Hopei and described as "Taoist societies", listed meeting days which are special meeting days for the Singapore sects I worked with and not celebrated by any other religious group I know of. Nine of these societies reported sixty-eight village organizations and one was represented in twenty-two villages. It was said probably half, possibly two-thirds, of the villages had one or more of the groups represented among their inhabitants.36
But was villager membership likely to have been common? And what about the leaders, what sort of men were they and where did they come from? A look at the sort of qualifications some sects demanded for rank-holders and satisfactions they offered to members might give us an idea.
Leadership was not for the busy, first of all. Much study and practice of religious tasks was necessary for passing the required examinations and vegetarian sects required leaders to practise abstinence. Sometimes, when for example a proselytizing campaign was underway (sectarian records in Singapore show there were often such campaigns, and also campaigns aimed at reamalgamating...
30
MARJORIE TOPLEY
organization as their only method for organizing members. There are certainly some overseas today which still retain the patriarch type of organization but several are run only by "family heads" (chia-chang). Such "family" groups have also fragmented to form separate off-shoots of the religion.
There is evidence also that for at least some of the vegetarian sects of China the dangers of running their organization through vegetarian halls was well recognised: that although sometimes such halls existed as centres for administration, for ordinary mem- bers meetings were more normally conducted in their own homes. De Groot writing on the Lung-hua sect in the town of Amoy (this sect is also an off-shoot of Hsien-r'ien Ta Tao as I discovered from my researches) talks of sectaries meeting in each other's homes. Their vegetarian halls were rooms in private dwellings (this is still true of some of the "halls" in urban Hong Kong today but not all of them). He says, however, a patriarch lived in a re- sidence which "may be something like a Buddhist convent".35
To what extent were ordinary members operating in their own homes residents of villages? Sects certainly appear to have operat- ed in villages in this century. Several organizations found in villages of Ting Hsien, a district of Hopei and described as "Taoist societies", listed meeting days which are special meeting days for the Singapore sects I worked with and not celebrated by any other religious group I know of. Nine of these societies reported sixty- eight village organizations and one was represented in twenty-two villages. It was said probably half, possibly two-thirds, of the villages had one or more of the groups represented among their inhabitants, 36
But was villager membership likely to have been common? And what about the leaders what sort of men were they and where did they come from? A look at the sort of qualifications some sects demanded for rank-holders and satisfactions they offer- ed to members might give us an idea,
Leadership was not for the busy, first of all. Much study and practice of religious tasks was necessary for passing the required examinations and vegetarian sects required leaders to practise abstinence. Sometimes, when for example a proselytizing campaign was underway (sectarian records in Singapore show there were often such campaigns, and also campaigns aimed at reamalgamat-
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