ABSTRACT

Secret religion is a special and interesting field in the study of Chinese history.

This research defines secret religion as the kinds of underground religious sects, mainly those popular sects prohibited by all imperial governments and excluded from government patronized religion and mainstream society.Over the course of imperial China, numerous popular sects existed and met violent suppression from governments, and therefore they had to go underground in order to survive.Because of their secretiveness and antigovernment political potential, they were labeled in official language as“evil cults”（xiejiao）.

The rebellious perspective of secret religion has been in the center of academic research in China in the past several decades.Researches on secret religion are always associate it with the history of peasant wars.And scholarships are heavily influenced by the political situation and ideology at the time.Since the early 1980s, a new generation of research reexamines secret religion from a new perspective that viewed it more as a popular movement stressing on its origins and organizations.This research examines their relationship with popular belief, cultural tradition and social transition.

Secret religion was rather widespread and entrenched in many periods of Chinese history, and its vitality and exuberance root in Chinese religion，culture, society and politics.Popular culture and popular belief were the knowledge source of common people from the lower echelon of society. Concepts of imperial authority,chivalrous and so on were important compo nents in popular culture.The concept of imperial authority was spiritual motives of sect leaders to start rebellion and found new dynasty.The concept of chivalry is behavior norms popular among common people, though it might transgress imperial law.We know that the concept of code of brotherhood was spread through the popular media of folk literature and drama, called as Jianghu xiqi（code of brotherhood on the rivers and lakes）.Secret sects picked it up and formed their own characteristic concept of morals and law.The secret sects belonged to the underworlds, they were incompatible with the upper culture, and folk culture was the natural elements that they used to form their own culture.

Because there are so many secret sects active in different periods and regions, their methods of doing missionary work, types of organization, religious ceremony and discipline, passwords and secret signs, scriptures and believes, everyday behaviors and extreme behaviors（including rebellions）and so on, deserve us to study carefully.

In fact, we can look upon China as two levels.One is clear-sighted, the other is dark.Few people can get insight to the dark one. If we do not understand the dark level of China, we can hardly say that we know a real China.Secret religion is an important part of Dark China, we can get much of Chinese religion, culture and social transition through it.

Secret religion exists and develops in the land of traditional China culture, its organizations and believes were mixed up with traditional popular culture and religious belief.Secret religion was not Daoism,nor Buddhism or Confucianism, though it contained certain elements from the three of them.People often feel bewildered by its mixture.Thus, to understand Chinese religion, we must trace the origin, development, and variation of secret religion.

The coming into being of secret religious doctrine has close relation ship with the influence of religious culture in history.Though most of the sects' scriptures mainly preach the ideas of kalpa, immortal old mother, home of vacuum, we must note that these ideas are formed after absorbing the Buddhist and Daoist scriptures and other similar Baojuan（precious scriptures）.In fact, the concepts of kalpa, immortals, Longhua, jileguo（millennia kingdom）basically belong to Buddhist doctrine; Daoist contents like therapy, keeping in good health, qigong etc., are also the cultivating contents of secret sects; Confucius ethics norms and moral teachings also give important influence on their behaviors.

The additional two points should be noted.One is the synchronism that united Buddhism,Daoism and Confucius.It is the religious base upon which secret sects existed and developed.The other is state patronized religion.The salvation concept of Buddhism,especially the belief of Maitreya，became the soul of overabundant secret sects.In late Ming and early Qing，the belief of Maitreya developed into the salvation concept of “Three Buddhas will save the world one by one”.Thereby, the formation of secret sects in Ming and Qing has great relationship with White Lotus Sect,Maitreya Religion and Mani Religion in addition to general traditional religious culture.

Certainly we must note that even if the scriptures and doctrines were soaked with much of rebellion thought, those common followers would not start rebellion simply for belief.What they need was just the satisfactory of religious belief, the appreciation of cultural amusements, and teachings of accumulating virtue, not destroying their family to revolt.Only their doctrine was combined with other social factors that rebellion will be realized.

Secret sects widely borrow the function of ready-made cultural structure in traditional agricultural society.The magic, religious and other cultural phenomenon were the means to motivate followers, organize sects，and set up rebellion.But it contributed to their failures.Secret sects lay low in daily life and harbor their energy and threatened the social order and political authority.The government viewed them as diseases in their vital organs, usually using legal and military methods to punish them severely. But because their followers and missionary networks are spread widely,especially the common customs benefits' impulse to those chieftains, they could exist generation by generation without being terminated easily.

Therefore, the spread and rebellion of secret sects are important phenomena of Chinese history and social transition.For example, both the Yellow Turban Uprising led by Taiping Sect, the Red Turban Uprising led by White Lotus Sect lead to the replaces of regimes.The White Lotus rebellion in mid-Qing also leads to the decline of Qing Empire.The Boxers’ Uprising in late Qing also had direct relation with secret sects. In Ming and Qing Dynasties, political authorities promulgated a series of laws aiming to suppress secret sects, but they did not achieve remarkable effect.Today Falungong in mainland China is also changed into a kind of secret sect.

Despite cruel suppression, secret sects persisted underground.Then how they absorb people join their sects and even start revolts? On the one hand, the sects' magic and religious flavor and the Land of Ultimate Bliss（described in their doctrine）were no doubt a kind of gigantic magic power; and, on the other hand, there were two realistic ways to curing sickness, building up a good physique, protecting the body, living for ever, going up to heaven to meet Wushenglaomu（immortal old mother, a goddess in the sects' doctrine），one is chanting scriptures and doing kind deeds, the other is qigong, that is the best method which can reflect directly the sects' magic power.As to Chinese martial arts and medicine, they are also important contents which the sects practicing.Many of contemporary Chinese martial arts and medicine come from those secret sects.