Religion and Popular Uprisings
These concessions to images of divine power long cherished by the population were no doubt expedient in a state committed to protracted military struggle with northern invaders.
But the most formidable enemies in the religious sphere were probably those within Song territory, and not just unassimilated non-Chinese peoples but also regular inhabitants of Chinese cultural areas who took up forms of religion seen as inimical to good order. The Manichaeans, for example, had not been extinguished by the persecution of 843, but continued to find adherents among the Chinese population. The rebellion of 920 alluded to above, though apparently within the tradition of Buddhist sectarian uprisings prompted by Chinese transformations of the apocalyptic beliefs, was blamed by one learned Buddhist on Manichaeans, perhaps as a diversionary tactic.[687] In the wake of the famous Fang La rebellion of 1119-21, which exploited religious imagery but does not seem to have had a strong religious element, a local magistrate was persuaded to allow the execution of several hundred ‘vegetarians'. These may well have been adherents of the later Manichaean tradition, but given that allegedly some 1-2 million perished in this uprising, these executions were in all probability merely precautionary and should not be seen as evidence of their insurrectionary ambitions.In fact a lack of insurrectionary intent would seem to hold true for the subsequent history of this religious tradition in China, though it would have been amongst those groups viewed with suspicion by the government, since it came within the catch-all title devised at about the time of this episode to define unacceptable religious groups as those who ‘eat vegetables and worship demons'. A vegetarian diet was a common feature of many Chinese religious movements, especially Buddhist ones, and the notion of demon worship was also so unclear that at one point a master who was a pillar of the Buddhist community suffered accusation under this rubric.
The later Manichaeans used the name ‘Teaching of Light', but this did not mean that various rebels claiming to be ‘Kings of Light' had any connection with them. That term, as the name of a future ruler, may be traced back to early origins in the Buddhist-inflected apocalyptic literature of the late sixth century, though it also occurs perfectly innocently in orthodox Buddhist sources. The other groups targeted by the pronouncements against vegetable-eating demon-worshippers, such as the White Lotus and White Cloud movements, were Buddhist associations of believers that had developed beyond the purview of monastic Buddhism, but they too apparently never harboured violent ambitions either.The potential, however, for uprisings fuelled by apocalyptic expectations of the collapse of the existing order had by no means evaporated. This had become clear already in 1047, when a rebellion erupted in Hebei, predicting the arrival of Maitreya, the Buddha of the future; one of the scriptures named in the background to this rebellion, though previously unknown, is again mentioned in the late twelfth century. Messianic rebellions also troubled the Jin dynasty in 1161 and 1171; conquest by the Jurchen seems to have precipitated the appearance of a number of new religious movements that were viewed with suspicion by the government, though, for most, precise details of their beliefs remain obscure.[688] In general the sources on religious ideas in rebel movements up to the end of the thirteenth century do not provide enough documentation to be clear what beliefs were in play, beyond the use of popular prognostication manuals. By this point the whole of China had fallen to the Mongol invaders, an achievement that allowed Chinggis Khan to be identified posthumously by their Chinese Buddhist subjects as a Cakravartin world ruler, whose conquests furthermore took place under the auspices of fierce Tantric deities.[689] Given that the figures that they themselves worshipped were thus nothing if not wrathful, the Mongols seem to have been entirely relaxed about the objects of worship preferred by their Chinese subjects, so those erstwhile marginal groups that had been criticised for eating vegetables and worshipping demons under this regime flourished with little apparent fear of persecution. Conflict between Buddhists and Daoists did lead Khubilai Khan to decree the destruction of the canon of the latter in 1281, though this measure was eventually relaxed, and no general persecution of Daoism was ever contemplated.