these struggles.  The provincial generals were at first Ts’ao Ts’ao, Lue Pu, Yuean Shao, and Sun Ts’e; later came Liu Pei.  All were striving to gain control of the government, and all were engaged in mutual hostilities from about 180 onwards.  Each general was also trying to get the emperor into his hands.  Several times the last emperor of the Later Han dynasty, Hsien Ti (190-220), was captured by one or another of the generals.  As the successful general was usually unable to maintain his hold on the capital, he dragged the poor emperor with him from place to place until he finally had to give him up to another general.  The point of this chase after the emperor was that according to the idea introduced earlier by Wang Mang the first ruler of a new dynasty had to receive the imperial seals from the last emperor of the previous dynasty.  The last emperor must abdicate in proper form.  Accordingly, each general had to get possession of the emperor to begin with, in order at the proper time to take over the seals.

By about A.D. 200 the new conditions had more or less crystallized.  There remained only three great parties.  The most powerful was that of Ts’ao Ts’ao, who controlled the north and was able to keep permanent hold of the emperor.  In the west, in the province of Szechwan, Liu Pei had established himself, and in the south-east Sun Ts’e’s brother.

But we must not limit our view to these generals’ struggles.  At this time there were two other series of events of equal importance with those.  The incessant struggles of the cliques against each other continued at the expense of the people, who had to fight them and pay for them.  Thus, after A.D. 150 the distress of the country population grew beyond all limits.  Conditions were as disastrous as in the time of Wang Mang.  And once more, as then, a popular movement broke out, that of the so-called “Yellow Turbans”.  This was the first of the two important events.  This popular movement had a characteristic which from now on became typical of all these risings of the people.  The intellectual leaders of the movement, Chang Ling and others, were members of a particular religious sect.  This sect was influenced by Iranian Mazdaism on the one side and by certain ideas from Lao Tz[)u] on the other side; and these influences were superimposed on popular rural as well as, perhaps, local tribal religious beliefs and superstitions.  The sect had roots along the coastal settlements of Eastern China, where it seems to have gained the support of the peasantry and their local priests.  These priests of the people were opposed to the representatives of the official religion, that is to say the officials drawn from the gentry.  In small towns and villages the temples of the gods of the fruits of the field, of the soil, and so on, were administered by authorized local officials, and these officials also carried out the prescribed sacrifices.  The old temples of the people were either done away with (we have