중국회도문(中國會道門) 소고

The societies of HuiDaoMen, appeared upon the scene of history in the later feudal age of china, were religious secret organizations whose adherents resisted their government or powerful families.

Generally, HuiDaoMens are grouped into political ones and religious ones. This distinction, however, comes from on which characteristics they laid emphasis, because both of regional and political goal appear in most of HuiDaoMens. Although those contemporary governments ordinarily called them Dow-Bees, which were groups of burglars without any political goal or regional ideal, HuiDaoMens are quite distinguishable from them.

So, it is possible to say that the requisites of HuiDaoMen were to be a secret society, to be popular, to be religious, to be political. That is, HuiDaoMens should not be understood as mere superstitious secret group, but religious societies giving comforts to people as popular societies in feudal age.

It is very important to have correct understandings on these HuiDaoMens, because they firstly appeard in the middle years of Ming(明) dynasty, and considerably affected the progress of Chinese history. Now I expect upcoming researches on them to bring into focus various aspects related to contemporary and social circumstances.