ng Mang. And once more, as then, a popular movement broke out, that of
the so-called "Yellow Turbans". This was the first of the two important
events. This popular movement had a characteristic which from now on
became typical of all these risings of the people. The intellectual
leaders of the movement, Chang Ling and others, were members of a
particular religious sect. This sect was influenced by Iranian Mazdaism
on the one side and by certain ideas from Lao Tzu; on the other side;
and these influences were superimposed on popular rural as well as,
perhaps, local tribal religious beliefs and superstitions. The sect had
roots along the coastal settlements of Eastern China, where it seems to
have gained the support of the peasantry and their local priests. These
priests of the people were opposed to the representatives of the
official religion, that is to say the officials drawn from the gentry.
In small towns and villages the temples of the gods of the fruits of the
field, of the soil, and so on, were administered by authorized local
officials, and these officials also carried out the prescribed
sacrifices. The old temples of the people were either done away with (we
have many edicts of the Han period concerning the abolition of popular
forms of religious worship), or their worship was converted into an
official cult: the all-powerful gentry extended their domination over
religion as well as all else. But the peasants regarded their local
unauthorized priests as their natural leaders against the gentry and
against gentry forms of religion. One branch, probably the main branch
of this movement, developed a stronghold in Eastern Szechwan province,
where its members succeeded to create a state of their own which
retained its independence for a while. It is the only group which
developed real religious communities in which men and women
participated, extensive welfare schemes existed and class differences
were discouraged. It had a real church organization with dioceses,
communal friendship meals and a confession ritual; in short, real piety
developed as it could not develop in the official religions. After the
annihilation of this state, remnants of the organization can be traced
through several centuries, mainly in central and south China. It may
well be that the many "Taoistic" traits which can be found in the
religions of late and present-day Mongolian and Tibetan tribes, can be
derived from this movement of the Yellow Tu