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did so sometimes to avail themselves of residential facilities rather than continue to live on in their own homes. In Ting Hsien many are said to have joined the "societies" because they were old and had no sons. Widows and women along in years became members.40
But it seems probable that in normal times ordinary membership consisted more of the dislocated peasantry living outside village communities rather than the common peasantry. Although early in the nineteenth century State policy was to punish only sects actually rebelling, the severe punishments meted out to members later in the century must have tended to restrict membership to the really desperate on the whole. For those outside villages, without extensive kinship organization and strong forms of mutual aid, the pseudo-kinship system could provide a better means for mutual cooperation, and sectarian ideology provided an explanation of the misfortunes leading to their unsatisfactory position in life. We hear of sects for grass-cutters, and firewood gatherers: occupations likely to be followed by persons outside village communities.42
It is difficult to assess the actual strength of sectarian organization territorially but there may have been factors preventing very widescale integration of the various units it comprised. In Singapore where main membership is of unattached working immigrant women who are generally illiterate, there is said to be a shortage of persons capable of taking rank and administrative position. The "family" system tends to overshadow that of the administrative hierarchy even in sects retaining patriarchs, with resulting conflicts between the interests of the locally organized groups and central leadership. This might well have been the case also in some rural areas of the homeland.
Loyalties to the "family" then, and also linguistic and cultural differences between the various areas, may have provided problems for sectarian central administration, as they did indeed for the State's own central administration. Not only was it probably difficult for most sects to keep the various rural groups of followers together but the imprisonment and death of leaders at the hands of the State had a serious effect on central control, as sectarian records show. Records I have seen show that removal of top leadership led sometimes to a splintering of the organization into further sects often becoming rivals.
CHINESE RELIGION AND RURAL COHESION
33
did so sometimes to avail themselves of residential facilities rather than continue to live on in their own homes. In Ting Hsien many are said to have joined the "societies" because they were old and had no sons. Widows and women along in years became members.40
But it seems probable that in normal times ordinary member- ship consisted more of the dislocated peasantry living outside village communities rather than the common peasantry. Although early in the nineteenth century State policy was to punish only sects actually rebelling, the severe punishments metered out to members later in the century must have tended to restrict member- ship to the really desperate on the whole. For those outside villages, without extensive kinship organization and strong forms of mutual aid, the pseudo-kinship system could provide a better means for mutual cooperation, and sectarian ideology provided an explanation of the misfortunes leading to their unsatisfactory posi- tion in life. We hear of sects for grass-cutters, and firewood gatherers: occupations likely to be followed by persons outside village communities.42
It is difficult to assess the actual strength of sectarian organiza- tion territorially but there may have been factors preventing very widescale integration of the various units it comprised. In Singa- pore where main membership is of unattached working immigrant women who are generally illiterate, there is said to be a shortage of persons capable of taking rank and administrative position. The "family" system tends to overshadow that of the administra- tive hierarchy even in sects retaining patriarchs, with resulting conflicts between the interests of the locally organized groups and central leadership. This might well have been the case also in some rural areas of the homeland.
Loyalties to the "family" then, and also linguistic and cultural differences between the various areas, may have provided problems for sectarian central administration, as they did indeed for the State's own central administration. Not only was it probably diffi- cult for most sects to keep the various rural groups of followers together but the imprisonment and death of leaders at the hands of the State had a serious effect on central control, as sectarian records show. Records 1 have seen show that removal of top leadership led sometimes to a splintering of the organization into further sects often becoming rivals.
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