suffering. This new eschatology was especially appeal-
ing during times of demographic crisis, such as war or
famine, which were now felt to portend the end of the
age. Although such crises also fueled the ascending mo-
tif of Buddhist utopianism, the belief that the individ-
ual soul would find postmortem salvation in the Pure
Land, Maitreya soon came to be distanced from this
vision and closely associated with the descending mo-
tif of the apocalypse. This belief also provided inspira-
tion for those who would take action to hasten along
the millennium by causing the destruction that marked
the end of the cycle.
The third innovation was the participation of Chi-
nese political actors in worship of Maitreya and rein-
terpretation of the cakravartin, not as a precursor to
the arrival of Maitreya, but as Maitreya himself. In part,
this was facilitated by the pre-Buddhist belief in the di-
vine significance of Chinese rulers as beneficiaries of
the “mandate of heaven.” As early as the fourth cen-
tury, rulers of the Chinese Northern Wei dynasty
(386–534) were identified as Buddhist deities, first as
TATHAGATAs and later as Maitreya. The most famous
instance occurred in the late seventh century, when the
empress Wu Zhao (625–705) revealed her identity as
Maitreya Buddha in order to bolster her highly con-
tested claim to the throne.
This politicization of Maitreya worship was soon
turned against its masters, and came to take on the dis-
tinctly antistate stance that it has held ever since. The
earliest known instances both occurred in the year 613,
when two separate individuals each proclaimed them-
selves to be Maitreya Buddha and raised the flag of
rebellion. In the eighth and eleventh centuries, large-
scale uprisings were mounted under the slogan of end-
ing the decaying epoch of S ́akyamuni and ushering in
the arrival of the new buddha. Finally, in the early four-
teenth century, a collection of religious societies de-
voted to the Maitreyan vision rose in rebellion against
the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1279–1368), and the leader
of one of these groups, Zhu Yuanzhang (1328–1398),
founded the Ming (meaning “bright,” an allusion to the
Buddhist ideal of divine KINGSHIP, the vidyarajas; Chi-
nese, ming wang) dynasty in 1368.
White Lotus sectarianism
The Ming dynasty brought organized Buddhism un-
der close state control, while lay devotion became
increasingly integrated into a syncretic mixture of Bud-
dhism, Daoism, and Confucianism known as the Three
Teachings. Particularly during the Ming and Qing dy-
nasties (mid-fourteenth through early twentieth cen-
turies), this mixture took shape in a tradition of pop-
ular teachings known collectively as White Lotus
sectarianism.
Although the White Lotus encompassed a number
of independent teachings, the tradition as a whole de-
veloped through a medium of scriptures known as
“precious scrolls” (baojuan), which were composed by
the hundreds over the course of these six centuries.
The earliest known text, dating from 1430, expounds
a basic version of the White Lotus eschatology, in-
cluding a tripartite division of sacred time, punctuated
by periods of apocalyptic calamity between epochs,
and the role of Maitreya as the buddha of the millen-
nial third epoch. However, although Maitreya is oc-
casionally mentioned in these scriptures in connection
with the change of epoch, he is not the primary fig-
ure. Rather, the characteristically sectarian contribu-
tion to this scheme is a supreme deity called the Eternal
Venerable Mother (wusheng laomu), from whom all
life emanates, and who has sent a series of teachers to
earth in order to save humankind from its own
wickedness. This must be accomplished before the end
of the second epoch, at which point, those of her hu-
man children who have cultivated goodness and pu-
rified themselves will be called to join the Dragon
Flower Assembly and invited to dwell in a millennial
paradise ruled over by Maitreya and the Eternal Ven-
erable Mother.
As was the case with later Maitreyan millenarian-
ism, the eschatological vision of the White Lotus sect
sees the decay and destruction of the human order as
precursors of the epochal change. Moreover, this
process can be hastened by human action in the form
of armed rebellion. Thus, the White Lotus tradition
was strictly banned, most energetically by the Ming
emperor who himself had ridden just such an upris-
ing to power. The most notable period of White Lo-
tus activity was during the nineteenth century, when
a number of such teachings, such as the Eight Trigrams
(bagua) and Primal Chaos (hunyuan) teachings, rose
in rebellion, often spurred on by the claim of a leader
to be the reincarnation of Maitreya. Such claims per-
sisted well into the middle of the twentieth century,
when groups such as the Way of Pervading Unity
(yiguandao) prophesied that a Communist victory
over the Nationalist forces would prompt the early
arrival of the millennium. Even among those groups
active during this period with no organizational or
doctrinal ties to the White Lotus tradition, such as the
mid-nineteenth-century Taipings or the Boxers fiveMILLENARIANISM ANDMILLENARIANMOVEMENTS