New Religious Ideas and New Forms of Writing Violence

It is also possible that this rebellion with its female leader foreshadowed important shifts that took place during the rest of the century that were to make the world of sectarian cults much more volatile during the period after 1500.

A religious reformer from a Buddhist background named Luo Menghong (1443-1527), also known by other names, such as Luo Qing, propounded an understanding of this tradition based on his own religious experience of seeking a true spiritual home. The ‘true emptiness' in which he discovered the object of his quest he described as ‘Mother' of all things. Soon adherents of this reformed religion personalised the ‘Eternal Mother' as the deity to which mankind should return. This soteriology no longer expected a future Maitreya, but placed the believer in an immediate eschatology wherein those who heeded the homecoming call of the Eternal Mother saw themselves as at odds with the rest of society.^{^[692]}

These developments, and the violent ramifications of the religious conflicts that resulted in local society and especially with the representatives of the state, do not concern us here, but have been traced after 1500 in the much more abundant archival sources available for all forms of historical research in China. The sequence of development before and after the lifetime of the founder also come into clearer focus because of the preservation of much more of the literature of sectarian groups in printed form, including later printings of the works of Luo Menghong himself. His ideas, moreover, are not the only ones already present before the end of the fifteenth century that become clearer to us through their presentation in publications that do not actually date to this time.

By the fifteenth century the major novels to emerge from popular storytelling in printed form at a slightly later date were all no doubt in existence as oral or written texts, even if not yet published, so their depictions of religion and violence can be used as evidence for the popular understanding of the relationship that came to be inherited by later ages.

In one case we have not only scattered evidence for the development of a legend but also a full textual source from the Song period that gives a good picture of an early stage in the evolution of the Journey to the West, which depicts the exploits of a Tang monk and his companions on a journey to India. The monk himself lifts not a finger to combat the various monsters that assail his little band: the fighting is left primarily to a simian alter ego, who lays about him to great effect with a cudgel, or else with a deadlier variant of the staff carried by all itinerant Buddhist monks.^{^[693]} Monks wielding lethal versions of the staff are described in a number of fictional sources, notably the Ming novel Water Margin, which goes back to tales of Song period outlaws. Daoist military leaders, on the other hand, are portrayed in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, for indeed during the second to third centuries in which the novel is set at least two organised religious movements did contend with the generals who vied for power at the time, though the novel itself is primarily interested in strategy and does not dwell on religious motivations. All in all, though, early popular fiction suggests that the idea of fighting clerics was as commonly accepted in China as the notion of fighting bishops in Europe.

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Source: Gordon Matthew, Kaeuper Richard, Zurndorfer Harriet (eds.). The Cambridge World History of Violence. Volume 2: AD 500-AD 1500. Cambridge University Press,2020. — 696 p.. 2020

New Religious Ideas and New Forms of Writing Violence

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