A Study On The Early Taoist Clergies

This dissertation is based on the traces of the historical development of Daoism, focuses on the Taoist clergy in the perspective of organized system, explores their origins, titles, functions, promotional conditions and influences of the early Taoist clergies in terms of the reading and analysis about the related early Taoist texts.When early Taoism was established, its organization was very complex because it was derived mainly from koradji of primitive religion as well as fangshi (方士) and yinyangjia (阴阳家) who were skilled in various technique, but Taoist were different from those koradjis, yinyangjia and fangshi. The differences were that Taoist depended on a kind of social organization. According to the development history of early Taoism, before the Taoist temple system was founded, there were two kinds of Taoist organizing institution, one was "politics-religion united" or "army-politics united" that was based on the unit of "fang"(方) or "zhi" (治) , the other was master-prentice system centered on the kin.In late Han dynasty, Zhangjao's Peace Taoism founded the parish of "36 fang", which took square as the unit, and established the communion organizing system in terms of "daxianliangshi(大贤良师) -jiangjun (将军)-bashi(八使)-qushi(渠使)", in which religious activity and political activity was integrated tightly and set army -politics combined system. At the same time, Zhangling founded Heavenly Master Taoism in Bashu region, and mounted jijiu(祭酒)system in conformity to "zhi"(治), which was a hierarchical system. The important features of the system were presented as below, firstly, integrating religion with politics and military, founded the politics-religion combined management system. Professional Taoists had two identities, namely master and official, which meant that they kept half religious and...