Chang Lu

views updated

Chang Lu. One of the secondary founder members, in the 2nd/3rd cent. CE, of the Taoist movement, wu-tou-mi tao. With the help of Chang Hsiu (whom he then removed), he established a strictly governed religious state in N. Szechwan. He took further the organization of the ‘Celestial Master's Way’, introducing the tao-shih (often translated as ‘the Taoist priest’), with a local temple and a hierarchy leading up to the Tʾien-shih. The ‘five pecks of rice’ was also extended into a more extensive system of fees, enabling the pervasive presence of the tao-shih in Chinese society—and the survival of religious Taoism in this form down to the present, at least in Taiwan.