The Yuan Dynasty, a powder keg full of contradictions, was waiting for its small historical flame to be ignited, and then ignited into a fire that reached the sky, burning all the hatred, humiliation and national oppression, and burying this vast empire that was about to decay. The long river of history. And this small historical flame is the Red Turban Army, also referred to as the "Red Army".
The Red Scarf Army is a peasant uprising with a strong religious flavor. They believe in Maitreya Buddha and King Ming, and preach that the world is about to be in chaos. Maitreya Buddha will be born to purify the world, and King Ming will be born to save all people. The believers wrapped their heads with red cloth and were called the Red Turban Army at the time.
This is exactly the same as Zhang Jiao's promotion of the Taiping Dao in the late Eastern Han Dynasty and the launch of the Yellow Turban uprising with the slogan "Heaven is dead, Huang Tian is here to stand, and the age of Jiazi will be good for the world." In feudal society, illiteracy and numbness were the current conditions of the people at the bottom. In order to awaken the people, peasant rebels always used the authority of religion, and they succeeded time and time again.
The religion that the Red Scarf Army believes in is actually a suture monster, with Mingjiao as the main body and a fusion of Maitreya and White Lotus in Buddhism. The origin of Mingjiao can be traced back to the Tang Dynasty, when it was called Manichaeism and was founded by Mani, a Persian.
But in fact, Manichaeism itself is also a suture monster, blending Zoroastrianism (Zoroastrianism), Christianity, and Buddhism into a new religion. Manichaeism believes that there are two different forces in the world, called light and dark. Ming is light (good), and darkness is darkness (evil). When light arrives, darkness is eliminated (isn't this Lao Tzu's yin and yang poles? ). The god of Mingjiao is called King Ming, and the birth of King Ming means that light will soon defeat darkness, and mankind will soon enter a world of light and bliss.
Manichaeism was attacked during the period when Emperor Wuzong of the Tang Dynasty exterminated Buddhism, and has since become a secret religion. And because Manichaeism’s canon teachings are quite different from traditional Chinese cultural customs, in order to better spread religion in China, Manichaeism gradually integrated with Buddhism and Taoism, and also added some primitive folk beliefs, thus becoming a brand new religion. The suture monster religion - Mingjiao.
Because Mingjiao believes that darkness will pass and light will come, they have the courage and strength to dare to rebel and revolt. During the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, people began to gather in Chenzhou (now Zhoukou, Henan) to rebel, but they were quickly defeated due to their weak strength. Among them, a small number of those who were lucky enough to escape fled to Fujian. By the Northern Song Dynasty, southern Fujian had become the most important Mingjiao parish, with widespread appeal and influence among the people. By the early Southern Song Dynasty, Mingjiao had spread throughout Huainan, Zhejiang, Jiangdong, and Jiangxi.
Due to the Hundred Years' War at the end of the Song Dynasty and the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, the vast number of poor people at the bottom were struggling between life and death. They were exploited by the court, abused by officials, enslaved by landlords, and treated like animals and lived a humiliating and hard life. This provides a broad mass base for the spread of Mingjiao. Once you join the religion, you are like brothers and sisters. When a family has something to do, fellow believers work together.
Therefore, Mingjiao replaced the clan and became a refuge for the lower class people. It gained many believers and the power to rebel. Maybe the people at the bottom are not so fanatical about religion, and they don't quite understand what the so-called birth of the Ming King is, but with such an organization and opportunity where they can no longer be bullied and oppressed, I believe most people will join it.
Since then, there has been the decadent rule of the Yuan Dynasty outside and the power of the Red Turban Army to start a prairie fire inside. The vigorous peasant uprising began in the last years of the Yuan Dynasty.
