ZHANG JUE

ZHANG JUE (d. 184 ce), founder of the Yellowa Turban sect. Zhang Jue was heir to the doctrines of Yu Ji, a sorcerer and healer who preached and practiced in Shandong and who was probably the author of the Taiping qingling shu (Book of Great Peace, or Book of Great Equality), a text now lost. Having received a revelation that the "blue heaven" of the Han dynasty was to be replaced by a "yellow heaven" (yellow is the color of the Center) in the first (jiazi ) year of the next new cycle of sixty years (i.e., 184 ce), around the year 175 Zhang Jue dispatched eight apostles to convert the people of the central and eastern provinces of China. They preached doctrines closely related to those of the Five Pecks of Rice sect in Sichuan. Like the leader of the latter sect, Zhang Lu, Zhang Jue healed the sick by group confession (sins were believed to be the cause of sickness), organized collective worship under a quasi-military church hierarchy, and used sexual techniques to achieve sanctity.

Zhang Jue's followers were called Yellow Turbans (Huangjin) from the yellow kerchiefs they wore on their heads in token of their expectation of the "yellow heaven." They worshiped Huang-Lao and were intent on inaugurating a golden age—the age of Great Peace—and a utopian state based on egalitarian ideas, as opposed to the Confucian ideas of social hierarchy. They regularly retired to oratories ("pure chambers," jingshi ) where they healed the sick by confession of sins and recitation of sacred scriptures. The followers of the sect were governed by moral codes and divided into thirty-six fang (a word that means both "regions" and "magic recipes"), local communities headed by "generals." The "three Zhangs," Zhang Jue and his two brothers, Liang and Bao, were respectively generals of Heaven, Earth, and Man, symbolizing their embodiment of the all-embracing triad.

Over a ten-year period, Zhang Jue enjoyed great success. He had several hundred thousand followers in eight provinces by the time he initiated the Yellow Turban rebellion in 184. Although Zhang Jue and his brothers were caught and executed in the same year, they left behind a great number of communities of believers, and as late as 205 the Yellow Turbans still posed a military problem for the government. The Yellow Turban uprisings in eastern and northern China, taken together with Zhang Lu's uprisings in the west, weakened the Han dynasty and contributed to its fall.

See Also

Daoism, overview article and article on The Daoist Religious Community; Millenarianism, article on Chinese Millenarian Movements; Taiping; Zhang Lu.

Bibliography

Eichhorn, Werner. "Bemerkungen zum Aufstand des Chang Chio und zum Staate des Chang Lu." Mitteilungen des Instituts für Orientforschung 3 (1955): 291–327.

Fukui Kojun. Dokyo no kisoteki kenkyu. Tokyo, 1952. See pages 62–92.

Levy, Howard S. "Yellow Turban Religion and Rebellion at the End of the Han." Journal of the American Oriental Society 76 (October-December 1956): 214–227.

Michaud, Paul. "The Yellow Turbans." Monumenta Serica 17 (1958): 47–127.

Isabelle Robinet (1987)