Two other elements further pressed on the peasants in the Mongol epoch—­organized religion and the traders.  The upper classes among the Chinese had in general little interest in religion, but the Mongols, owing to their historical development, were very religious.  Some of them and some of their allies were Buddhists, some were still shamanists.  The Chinese Buddhists and the representatives of popular Taoism approached the Mongols and the foreign Buddhist monks trying to enlist the interest of the Mongols and their allies.  The old shamanism was unable to compete with the higher religions, and the Mongols in China became Buddhist or interested themselves in popular Taoism.  They showed their interest especially by the endowment of temples and monasteries.  The temples were given great estates, and the peasants on those estates became temple servants.  The land belonging to the temples was free from taxation.

We have as yet no exact statistics of the Mongol epoch, only approximations.  These set the total area under cultivation at some six million ch’ing (a ch’ing is the ideal size of the farm worked by a peasant family, but it was rarely held in practice); the population amounted to fourteen or fifteen million families.  Of this total tillage some 170,000 ch’ing were allotted to the temples; that is to say, the farms for some 400,000 peasant families were taken from the peasants and no longer paid taxes to the state.  The peasants, however, had to make payments to the temples.  Some 200,000 ch’ing with some 450,000 peasant families were turned into military settlements; that is to say, these peasants had to work for the needs of the army.  Their taxes went not to the state but to the army.  Moreover, in the event of war they had to render service to the army.  In addition to this, all higher officials received official properties, the yield of which represented part payment of their salaries.  Then, Mongol nobles and dignitaries received considerable grants of land, which was taken away from the free peasants; the peasants had then to work their farms as tenants and to pay dues to their landlords, no longer to the state.  Finally, especially in North China, many peasants were entirely dispossessed, and their land was turned into pasturage for the Mongols’ horses; the peasants themselves were put to forced labour.  On top of this came the exploitation of the peasants by the great landowners of the past.  All this meant an enormous diminution in the number of free peasants and thus of taxpayers.  As the state was involved in more expenditure than in the past owing to the large number of Mongols who were its virtual pensioners, the taxes had to be continually increased.  Meanwhile the many peasants working as tenants of the great landlords, the temples, and the Mongol nobles were entirely at their mercy.  In this period, a second migration of farmers into the southern provinces, mainly Fukien and Kwangtung, took place; it had its main source in the lower Yangtze valley.  A few gentry families whose relatives had accompanied the Sung emperor on their flight to the south, also settled with their followers in the Canton basin.