Page 135 - The Encyclopedia of Taoism v1_A-L

OVERVIEW 95

the representative of moral and religious order, and in turn set itself up against
other millenarian sects.
This destiny was not shared by the other main contemporary Taoist millenar-
ian movement, the Taiping dao * '¥J!t (Way of Great Peace) of the *Yellow
Turbans. Active in eastern China, and close to the Celestial Masters in their
practices and ideology-emphasizing disease caused by sins, therapy through
confessions and talismans, recitation of the Daode jing, and so forth-the Yellow
Turbans went so far as to threaten the power of the Han dynasty. Their insur-
rection of the year r84 was violently repressed. The movement thus was not
institutionalized, but continued to exist underground. The utopia of the Great
Peace (*taiping) remained a powerful detonator for millenarian uprisings, such
as the great rebellion of *Sun En which blew up in southern China in 399. The
followers of these movements considered a change of sovereign as a sine qua
non condition for the success of the messianic realization, since the emperor
was believed to incarnate the cosmic as well as the political order. The advent
of the reign of Great Peace necessarily implied the renewal of the Heavenly
Mandate (tianming .::R:.iP).
During the period of partition of the Six Dynasties, while northern China
was ruled by non-Chinese peoples, southern China- the guarantor of ances-
tral cultural and religious traditions- became the location of an unceasing
messianic effervescence. Prophets of the rural masses called Li or Li Hong
multiplied, stirring up anxieties about the coming end of the world among
their followers. Although these self-proclaimed prophets claimed to act under
Laojun's authority, they were not only persecuted by officials but also attacked
by orthodox Taoism, which condemned them as charlatans and heretics.
The second-century Taoist millenarian movements are known to us es-
sentially through the accounts of the official dynastic histories. The first-
hand accounts that have survived, preserved in the Taoist Canon and among
the *Dunhuang manuscripts, date to the second and third centuries. But it
was mainly during the fourth to sixth centuries in southern China that an
abundant messianic literature was produced by both marginal Taoist sects
and mainstream, official Taoist movements. In fact, by that time messianic
beliefs were not limited to the uneducated masses, but had also become an
important concern of the Taoist elite. Their literary apocalypses were said
to be transmitted to earth in times of intense cosmic and moral crisis to save
the "seed-people" (*zhongmin). All of these texts predict the advent of the
messiah Li Hong and the inauguration of the ideal reign of Great Peace. The
main Taoist apocalyptic scripture, entitled *Dongyuan shenzhou jing (Scripture
of the Divine Spells of the Cavernous Abyss), was produced at the beginning
of the fifth century by a religious community active in the Jiangnan iI l¥i
region. Liturgically organized on the margins of the Celestial Masters, with