The Early Taoism in China

Refers to Taoism founded in the late Han Dynasty.

In the history of Taoism, Zhang Ling and Zhang Heng's Tianshi Dao, Zhang Xiu and Zhang Lu's Wudoumi Dao, and Zhang Jiao's Taiping Dao are all named early Taoism. The founders of early Taoism were mostly believers of Huang-Lao Dao, which was popular among the upper class of the Eastern Han society. They inherited some longevity and immortality prescriptions from Huang-Lao Dao, preached to the lower classes of society with the doctrines of The Taiping Jing, and cured diseases and exorcised disasters with talismans and water among the people in the years when plagues were prevalent, thus developing into large-scale popular Taoist associations.

These popular Taoist associations were mainly composed of laboring people, with the purposes of curing diseases, eliminating disasters, exorcising misfortunes, advocating goodness and providing relief. They absorbed and transformed folk witchcraft and ghost Dao, and established relatively complete religious organizations modeled on the administrative system of the Han Dynasty. Early Taoism had a unified leader, doctrines, precepts and simple religious rituals. The Taoist believers had religious beliefs, participated in unified religious activities and obeyed the religious rules. The religious groups had a strong feudal patriarchal political color in organization.

The inheritance of the Taoist leaders adopted the hereditary system, and the religious groups were managed in the form of families. After the establishment of early Taoist sects such as Wudoumi Dao and Taiping Dao, they confronted the state apparatus of the feudal dynasty in the late Han Dynasty and were forced to reform their religious forms to adapt to the patriarchal politics. During the Wei and Jin Dynasties, early Taoism disintegrated, and the religious elements gradually improved. By the Southern and Northern Dynasties, it developed into a mature church-style temple Taoism.