Research On The Law Of Secret Sects By The Song Dynasty

There were many names of secret sects in the Song Dynasty,but most of them were identified as "setting name trickily".As a result,they were legally classified into two categories that "Chi-Cai Shi Mo" and "Chuan-Xi Yao Jiao".The government’s criticism of their crimes is mainly reflected in the ethical order and political security with Confucianism as the core,so the idea of the government’s governance is to enact severe punishment law to severely crack down on them.This led to a certain tendency of expansion,especially in the period of secret sects grew rampantly or after the peasant uprisings,which was reflected in the prohibition of non-secret sects such as common assembly.The ideas of enacting laws in Song Dynasty reflected in the legal measures were mainly manifested in penalty and supervision.In general,“Severe Punishments” and“Rewards and Punishments” were the legal thoughts running through it,which deeply practiced the legal thoughts of legalists.In addition to legal measures,the social effects of repeated secret sects under the prohibition and the tense atmosphere were also mentioned.Some scholar-officials attributed it to excessive punishment,while others attributed it to excessive judicial leniency,and some attributed it to the reward and punishment measures themselves.But these malpractices are the embodiment of legalist and Confucian legal thoughts,such as the instrumentalism of law,the judging leniently and the theory of evil nature embodied in punishment and reward,which were essentially the same with the other cases of the song dynasty.Contrarily,the positive effects of the governance of secret sects in the Song Dynasty should be recognized first,and the discussion of its limitations should be based on them.What makes the case of the secret sect specially is that it involves the realm of thoughts,so the power brought by the public’s identification with the secret sects should be valued.The limitations of the Song Dynasty government’s reliance on law to fight against the power brought by the public’s identification are reflected in the following aspects.on the one hand,the cognation of “the stupid masses” and the thought of“controlling the masses” reflected behind the law made it ignore the subject consciousness and power of the masses.On the other hand,because of their denial of individual people,they couldn’t see the social situation that the power rooted in.Thus,they lacked the research and cooperation with other social policies when they governing the secret sects relying on the law.