Chapter XIII · MANES AND THE MANICHAEANS (continued 2)

It will be seen that in these first five sections or clauses of the Confession, we have a confirmation in all essential points of the version of the faith taught by Manes as it has been preserved for us by the Mahommedan authors quoted above. It is even possible that it was from this source that the author of the Fihrist and Al-Bîrûnî derived some of their information concerning the Manichaeans, and although it is impossible as yet to fix any date for the Confession except within very wide limits, it may be said that it is probably earlier than either of the Mahommedan writers. It is certainly earlier than 1035 A.D., the date at which the grotto at Tun-huang in which one of the copies was bricked up^[1162]. But it seems plain that it must have long before been used in the Manichaean worship from the fact that copies differing little, if at all, from each other have been found in two different scripts. As two of these are in the Turkish language, it seems likely that they were translated for proselytizing purposes into this from the earlier Syriac version shortly after the conquest of the Tou-kiue or Turks by the Ouigours, which some authors put as far back as the VIIth century A.D.^[1163] The tenets of the Manichaeans must have been well settled for this to be possible, and we have here, therefore, an account at first hand of Manichaean teaching at a date much earlier than the Mahommedan authors quoted above, and first reduced to writing between the earliest promulgation of Manes’ own teaching and the Mahommedan conquest of Persia. It is, therefore, contemporary, or nearly so, with the period of activity 339of the Zoroastrianism revived by the Sassanides, and it is interesting to find how much nearer in appearance to the cosmology and theology of the Avesta are those of the Khuastuanift than is the Christianized form of Manichaeism introduced into Europe and Africa and combated by St Augustine. Khormuzta, the First Man, is certainly Ahura Mazda, Oromazes, or Ormuzd, while the Fivefold God here spoken of as the “youth” is clearly to be identified with his five sons or the armour left below on his defeat^[1164]. Hence it is probable that the Manichaeans in Upper Asia did not wish to appear as the worshippers of any other deities than those of the Persian nation^[1165], although where Christianity was the religion of the State, they were willing to call these deities by other names^[1166]. Yet the dualism which is the real characteristic of the faith of Manes here as elsewhere admits of no compromise, and the sin against which the Section II is directed is plainly that Zervanist heresy which would make Zervan akerene or Boundless Time the author of all things, and Ormuzd and Ahriman alike his sons. The part played by the Sun and Moon in the redemption of the Light is here the same as that assigned to them in both the Christian and the Mahommedan accounts of Manes’ own teaching, but nothing is here said of the wheel which appears in the former^[1167]. The Divine “Burkhans” mentioned in Section III are, as we shall see later, the Divine Messengers sent from time to time into the present world to assist in the redemption of the Light. The sinfulness of feeding upon, injuring, or even angering the lower animals is here much more strongly insisted upon than in the other documents and 340demands repentance even in the case of the Hearers, and this points directly to a closer connection with Buddhism than hitherto has been thought possible. It is plainly opposed to the later Zoroastrian teaching, which makes the killing of certain animals belonging to the creation of Ahriman a religious duty; and may therefore have only been adopted by the Manichaeans when they found themselves in contact with a large community of professed Buddhists.

The next five sections of the Khuastuanift run thus:

Sect. VI. “If, O my God, we have wandered into sin, and have committed the ten kinds of sin in thoughts, words, and deeds. If we have made up fraudulent lies; if we have sworn false oaths; if we have borne false witness; if we have treated as guilty guiltless men; if by fetching and carrying tales we have set men at variance, and thereby have perverted their minds; if we have practised magic; if we have killed many animated and moving beings; if we have given way to wanton pleasures; if we have wasted the hard-earned gains of industrious men; if we have sinned against the God of the Sun and Moon^[1168]. If in our past and present lives since we have become Manichaeans [i.e. Hearers] we have sinned and gone astray, thereby bringing confusion and discord upon so many animated beings, O my God, to cleanse ourselves from sin, so pray we now, Manâstâr hîrzâ! (Our sin remit!)”

Sect. VII. “Who is he who wandering in sin comes to the entry of the two poison-laden ways, and to the road which leads astray to the Gate of Hell? The first is he who holds to false doctrines; the second is he who invokes the Demon as God and falls down before him. O my God, if wandering in sin, we have failed to recognize and understand the true God and his pure faith, and have not believed what the Burkhans and the pure Elect have preached^[1169], and have instead believed on those who preach falsely, saying ‘I preach the true God, and I expound the faith rightly.’ If we have accepted the words of such a one and have unwittingly kept wrongful fasts, and have unwittingly bowed ourselves wrongfully, and wrongfully 341given alms; or if we have said ‘We will acquire merit’ and thereby have unwittingly committed evil deeds; or if, invoking the Demon and the Fiend as God, we have sacrificed to them animated and moving beings; or if, saying, ‘this is the precept of the Burkhan,’ we have put ourselves under a false law and have bowed ourselves, blessing it. If, thus sinning against God, we have prayed to the Demon. O my God, to cleanse ourselves from sin, so pray we now: Manâstâr hîrzâ! (Our sin remit!)”

Sect. VIII. “When we came to the knowledge of the true God and the pure Law, we knew the Two Principles and the Law of the Three Ages^[1170]. The Light Principle we knew to be the Paradise of God and the Dark Principle to be the Land of Hell. We knew what existed before Heaven and Earth, the Earth of God, was. We knew how God and the Demon fought with one another, and how Light and Darkness became mingled together, and how Heaven and Earth were created. We knew how the Earth of the Rulers and its Heaven will disappear, and how the Light will be freed from the Darkness, and what will then happen to all things. We believed in and put our faith in the God Azrua, in the God of the Sun and Moon, in the Mighty God^[1171], and in the Burkhans, and thus we became Hearers. Four bright seals have we carved upon our hearts. One is Love which is the seal of the God Azrua^[1172]; the second is Faith, which is the seal of the God of the Sun and Moon; the third is the Fear of God which is the seal of the Fivefold God; and the fourth is the wise Wisdom, which is the seal of the Burkhans. If, O my God, we have turned away our spirits and minds from these four (categories of) Gods; if we have spurned them from their rightful place, and the Divine Seals have thus been broken, O my God, to cleanse ourselves from sin, so pray we now: Manâstâr hîrzâ! (Our sin remit!)”

Sect. IX. “In the Ten Commandments, we have been ordered to keep three with the mouth, three with the heart, three with the hand, and one with the whole self. If, O my God, we have wittingly or unwittingly by cleaving to the love of the body, or by listening 342to the words of wicked companions and friends, of associates and fellows; or by reason of our having much cattle and other possessions; or by our foolish attachment to the things of this world, we have broken these ten commandments, and have been found wanting and of no avail: O my God, to cleanse ourselves from sin, so pray we now: Manâstâr hîrzâ! (Our sin remit!)”

Sect. X. “We have been ordered to render every day, with a whole mind and a pure heart, four praises to the God Azrua, to the God of the Sun and Moon, to the Mighty God, and to the Burkhans. If from lack of the fear of God or from slackness our praises have been offered unseemly, or if in offering them we have not turned our hearts and minds towards God, so that our praises and prayers have not reached God in pure wise, but have remained in another place: O my God, to cleanse ourselves from sin, so pray we now: Manâstâr hîrzâ! (Our sin remit!)”

This second part of the Confession, perhaps, deals with errors of conduct as the first does with errors of belief. The ten sins given in the VIth Section do not agree exactly with the list given in the Fihrist which says that the Manichaean Hearers were enjoined to abstain from prayers offered to idols, from lying, from greed, from murder, adultery, theft, from false teaching, from magic, from doubt in religion, and from slackness in action^[1173]; but perhaps all these prohibitions could be read into the list in the Khuastuanift. The VIIth Section seems to be directed not so much against other religions as against schisms within the Manichaean Church^[1174], and it is evident that its authors knew of bloody sacrifices offered to the Powers of Darkness as described by Plutarch apart from the magic or sorcery condemned in the preceding section. In the VIIIth Section, we have also for the second time a new name for God in the word Azrua, which Prof. von Le Coq leaves unexplained; but which M. Gauthiot considers to be the same as, or rather the equivalent in Soghdian of Zervan^[1175]. Zervan, however, can hardly be here the Supreme God worshipped by Yezdegerd, especially as the Khuastuanift has just, as we have 343seen, formally condemned as blasphemers those who say that Ormuzd and Ahriman are brethren, and therefore by implication those who give both Powers Zervan for a father. It seems more likely that the name is either a corruption of Ahura Mazda or perhaps of the Sanskrit Asura; but in any event, there can be no doubt that it denotes the King of the Paradise of Light, as the Highest Good God is called in the Fihrist. The division of the Ten Commandments of Manes into three of the mouth, three of the hand, three of the heart, and one of the whole being recalls St Augustine’s description of the three seals, the signaculum oris, signaculum manus, and signaculum sinus, observed by the Manichaeans^[1176]; while the description in Section X of the four praises (or hymns) to be rendered daily bears out what is said above as to the praises of man being of importance for the actual redemption of the Light.

The remaining sections of the Khuastuanift are:

Sect. XI. “We have been ordered to give reverently seven kinds of alms for the sake of the pure Law. It has also been ordered that when the angels of the Light of the Five Gods and the two Appellant and Respondent Gods bring to us the Light of the Five Gods which is to go to the Gods to be purified, we should in all things order ourselves [or, ‘dress ourselves,’ according to Le Coq] according to the Law. If, through necessity or because of our foolishness, we have not given the seven kinds of alms according to the Law, but have bound the Light of the Five Gods, which should go to the Gods to be purified, in our houses and dwellings, or if we should have given it to evil men or to evil animals, and have thereby wasted it and sent it to the Land of Evil, O my God, to cleanse ourselves from sin, so pray we now: Manâstâr hîrzâ! (Our sin remit!)”

Sect. XII. “We have been ordered to keep every year 50 days of Vusanti^[1177] after the manner of the pure Elect, and thereon [?] to 344please God by observing pure fasts. If, by reason of the care of our houses and dwellings or of our cattle and other possessions; or by reason of our need and poverty [foolish attachments, apud Le Coq]; or because of the greedy and shameless Demon of Envy; or of our irreverent hearts, we have broken the fast, either wittingly or by foolishness; or having begun it have not fasted according to the Rite and the Law. O my God, to cleanse ourselves from sin, so pray we now: Manâstâr hîrzâ! (Our sin remit!)”

Sect. XIII. “We have been ordered to pray every Full Moon [literally, every day of the Moon-God], to acknowledge before God, the Law, and the pure Elect, our sins and transgressions in prayer for the cleansing of ourselves from sin. If now wittingly, or by feebleness of mind, or from idleness of body, or because our minds were set on the cares and business of this world, we have not thus gone to prayer for the cleansing of ourselves from sin. O my God, to cleanse ourselves from sin, so pray we now: Manâstâr hîrzâ! (Our sin remit!)”

Sect. XIV. “We have been ordered to keep each year seven Yimki^[1178] [Days of Atonement?] and one month’s rigid fast[?]. We have also been ordered when meeting together in the House of Prayer to keep the Yimki and to observe the fast, to acknowledge in prayer with a whole mind to the Divine Burkhans the sins which we have committed during the year and which we know through our senses. O my God, if we have not kept the Yimki seemly; if we have not observed the month’s rigid fast perfectly and seemly; if we have failed to acknowledge in prayer the sins of the year which we know through our senses, and have thus failed in so many of our duties. 345O my God, to cleanse ourselves from sin, so pray we now: Manâstâr hîrzâ! (Our sins remit!)”

Sect. XV. “How many evil thoughts do we not think every day! How many deceitful and unseemly words do we not speak! How many unseemly deeds do we not do! Thus do we prepare torments for ourselves by crimes and frauds. Since we have walked body and soul in the love of the greedy and shameless Demon of Envy, and the Light of the Five Gods which we absorb in our food every day thereby goes to the Land of Evil. Wherefore, O my God, to cleanse ourselves from sin, so pray we now: Manâstâr hîrzâ! (Our sins remit!)”

Here follows a lacuna of four lines, after which the Confession resumes:

“O my God. We are full of defects and sins! We are thine adversaries and grieve thee by thoughts, words and deeds, for the sake of the greedy and shameless Demon of Envy. Gazing with our eyes, hearing with our ears, seizing with our hands, and trampling with our feet, we ever torture and impede the Light of the Five Gods, the dry and wet earth, the five kinds of animals, and the five kinds of plants and trees. So full are we of defects and sins! On account of the Ten Commandments, the seven kinds of Alms, the three seals, we are called Hearers; yet we cannot perform what these claim of us. If, wandering in sin, we have sinned against the Gods of Light, against the pure Law, against the Herald God^[1179] and the Preacher, the Men of God [the Preachers, according to Le Coq], against the pure Elect. If we have not walked according to the letter and spirit of the spoken words of God. If we have grieved the hearts of the Gods. If we have been unable to keep the Days of Atonement, the rigid fast, to offer the Praises and the Blessings according to the Law and the Rite. If we have been found lacking and unprofitable, and have day by day and month by month committed sins and trespasses—to the Gods of Light, to the Majesty of the Law, to the pure Elect, to cleanse ourselves from sin, so pray we now: Manâstâr hîrzâ! (Our sin remit!)”

These last five sections of the Khuastuanift give us a glimpse of the religious observances of the Manichaeans which alters somewhat the picture of them which we should have formed from 346the account of St Augustine and other Christian writers. The seven kinds of alms referred to in Section XI, are not, as might be thought, the gifts to necessitous or helpless persons prescribed alike by the Christian and the Mahommedan religions. It is apparent both from the context and from other sources of information that they are the offerings of food made by the lay or lowest members of the Manichaean community to the Elect or Perfect, who are spoken of in the subsequent sections as being already a species of Gods. This practice was certainly known to St Augustine, and was not likely to sink into oblivion in a community in contact with Buddhists, among whom monks living upon food given in alms by the faithful were a common sight. But the reason assigned by St Augustine for the practice, which was before obscure, here receives full explanation. The particles of light diffused through matter, and therefore inhabiting the bodies of animals and plants, could only, in Manichaean opinion, be set free by passing into the bodies of the semi-divine Elect. Thus says St Augustine in his treatise against the Manichaean Perfect, Faustus^[1180]:

“This foolish notion of making your disciples bring you food, that your teeth and stomach may be the means of relieving Christ who is bound up in it, is a consequence of your profane fancies. You declare that Christ is liberated in this way—not, however, entirely; for you hold that some tiny particles of no value still remain in the excrement, to be mixed up and compounded again in various material forms, and to be released and purified at any rate by the fire in which the world will be burned up, if not before.”

With the substitution of the “Light of the Fivefold God” for Christ—the use of this last name being probably either the gloss of St Augustine himself, or else the concession made by the Manichaean missionaries after their manner to the religious prepossessions of those among whom they hoped to gain converts—we have here the doctrine more plainly stated in the Khuastuanift. The Hearers are to labour perpetually, idleness being one of the Manichaean deadly sins, and to present 347the fruits of their labour in the shape of food to the Perfect. Not only will the particles of Light imprisoned in this last thus be conveyed to the Land of the Gods; but it will be prevented from going to the Land of Evil, which it would do if it were consumed by the bodies of the Hearers or, a fortiori, of those profane persons who belonged to other faiths than the Manichaean. Thus is explained the inhumanity of which many writers accuse the Manichaean community, which led them to refuse food to their neighbours in time of famine, alleging that all that they produced must be reserved for those of the Faith^[1181].

This explains also the merit assigned to the observance of the many fasts enjoined in the concluding sections of the Khuastuanift. The fifty Vusanti fasts together with the month’s rigid fast to be kept by the Hearers would all have the effect of diminishing their consumption of food in the shape of animals and plants, which hinders the liberation of the particles of Light imprisoned therein. In the choice of the days set apart for these fasts we see another instance of the Manichaean practice as assimilating the outward observances of other religions. The fifty Vusanti fasts would give an average of very nearly one a week, and were probably kept on Sunday, the distinction between the Elect and the Hearers in this respect noted by the Mahommedan writer being probably due to some misconception. The month’s rigid fast possibly accorded with the Arab Ramadan and must have been very useful in preventing the Hearers from appearing singular when among Mahommedans; and the seven Yimki or Days of Atonement seem to have been copied from the observances of the Jews. So possibly was the ritual practice alluded to in the XIVth section of meeting together at certain times to confess their sins, and as this is here said to take place in the House of Prayer, it entirely disposes of the theory set up by earlier writers that the Manichaeans had no temples, synagogues, or churches of their own^[1182]. The confession and prayer enjoined in Section XIII were doubtless to be repeated privately and in whatever place the 348Hearer found himself at the fortnightly periods there specified, and this Litany was very probably the Khuastuanift itself^[1183].

What other ritual was performed in these Manichaean meeting-places is still doubtful. The Christian writers declare that the Manichaeans celebrated a sacrament resembling the Eucharist with the horrible accompaniments before alluded to in the case of the followers of Simon Magus^[1184]. The same accusation was made, as has been many times said above, by nearly all the sects of the period against each other, and we have no means of determining its truth. It is however fairly certain from the silence observed on the subject by the Khuastuanift that no sacramental feast of any kind was either celebrated by or in the presence of the Hearers or general body of Manichaeans. If the Perfect or Elect partook of any such meal among themselves, it possibly consisted of bread and water only and was probably a survival of some custom traditional in Western Asia of which we have already seen the traces in the Mysteries of Mithras^[1185]. The pronounced Docetism which led the Manichaeans to regard the body of the historical Jesus as a phantom shows that they could not have attributed to this meal any sacramental efficacy like that involved in the doctrines either of the Real Presence or of the Atonement.

The case is different with regard to pictures. The Manichaeans forbade the use of statues or probably of any representations of the higher spiritual powers, no doubt in recollection of the idea current among the Persians even in Herodotus’ time, 349that the gods had not the nature of men. Yet the Jewish and later the Mahommedan prohibition against making likenesses of anything had evidently no weight with them, and even before the recent discoveries there was a tradition that Manes himself was in the habit of using symbolical pictures called Ertenki-Mani as a means of propaganda^[1186]. The truth of this is now amply confirmed by the German discoveries at Turfan, where Prof. von Le Coq found frescoes representing possibly Manes himself, together with paintings on silk showing the souls of the faithful dead in the Moon-ship^[1187]. Sir Marc Stein seems to have secured similar relics at Tun-huang, and when these are more thoroughly examined it is possible that they may throw light upon many points of Manichaean symbolism yet obscure to us. The fact that the Manichaean meeting-houses were decorated with symbolical pictures seems thereby already established.

Of their fasts, the principal ones have been already indicated in the Khuastuanift, and their feasts seem to have been few, almost the only one of which any mention has come down to us being that which was called the Festival of the Bema or pulpit, when an empty chair on five steps was placed in a conspicuous position in the meeting-house and adored by all present. This was said to have been done in commemoration of Manes as their founder and on the date preserved as the anniversary of his death^[1188]. If it be really true that any Manichaeans whether Hearers or otherwise kept Sunday as a holiday, it must have been, as Neander suggests, not because it was the day of the Resurrection, in which their Docetic doctrines prevented them from believing, but as the day of the Sun. In like manner they probably observed Christmas as the birthday not of Jesus, but of the Sun-god in accordance with the traditions preserved by the worshippers of Mithras^[1189]. 350St Augustine speaks, too, of their keeping Easter^[1190]. It seems possible that this was only done in Christian countries, in accordance with their usual custom of conforming in outward matters, and we have no evidence of their doing anything of the sort in Turkestan.

Of the sacred books of the Manichaeans we hear much, although only one has survived to us in anything like completeness. Thus we hear from Al-Bîrûnî that the Manichaeans have a gospel of their own “the contents of which from the first to the last are opposed to the doctrine of the Christians,” and this he says was called “the Gospel of the Seventy^[1191].” He also tells us of a book written by Manes himself called Shaburkan or Shapurakhan which was doubtless written for the edification of King Shâpûr or Sapor, the son of Ardeshîr, whose name it bears^[1192]. In this Manes seems to have described his own birth and his assumption of the office of heavenly messenger or “Burkhan,” besides the saying as to the Burkhans before him, Zoroaster, Buddha, and Jesus, as described above^[1193]. We also hear from Al-Bîrûnî that he wrote a gospel arranged according to the 22 letters of the alphabet, which does not seem to be the same as the Gospel of the Seventy^[1194], and we hear from other sources of a Book of the Giants, a Book of Secrets, a Book of Precepts, a Book of Lifegiving, and others, together with many letters or epistles all supposed to be by Manes’ own hand^[1195]. As has been said, he and his followers rejected the Old Testament entirely, not indeed denying its inspiration, but declaring this to have come from the Evil Principle. Of the New Testament, Faustus, the Manichaean Perfect who disputed with St Augustine, puts the matter very clearly when he says:

“We receive only so much of the New Testament as says anything to the honour of the Son of Glory, either by Himself or by His apostles; and by the latter only after they had become perfect and 351believers. As for the rest, anything that was said by them either in their simplicity and ignorance, while they were yet inexperienced in the truth, or with malicious design was inserted by the enemy among the statements of truth, or was incautiously asserted by other writers and thus handed down to later generations—of all this we desire to know nothing. I mean all such statements as these—that He was shamefully born of a woman; that as a Jew He was circumcised; that He offered sacrifices like a heathen; that He was meanly baptized, led into the wilderness, and miserably tempted^[1196].”

Thus it seems that the Manichaeans accepted only such facts of the Gospel narrative as did not conflict with their own doctrines, and although they are said to have had an especial veneration for St Paul, there is no reason to think that this extended to the writings of the Apostle to the Gentiles, or had any other motive than that of external conformity with the religion of those whom they were endeavouring to convert. As himself the Paraclete announced in the New Testament, Manes claimed for himself an authority superior to that of all apostles, and if he made use of any of the writings attributed to them, it was probably only in the shape of isolated passages divorced from their context. On the other hand, his followers seem to have made free use of apocryphal or pseudepigraphical books written in the names of the apostles and containing statements which could be explained as confirming Manes’ teaching. A great number of these had as their common authors the names of St Thomas and St Andrew, and the Fathers declare that they were for the most part the work of one Leucius, whom they assert was a Manichaean^[1197]. It may be so; but, as all the copies of these works which have come down to us have been expurgated or, in the language of the time, “made orthodox,” by the removal of heretical matter, there is little proof of the fact.

More authentic, however, than these pseudepigrapha and much fuller than the extracts preserved by Christian or Mahommedan 352writers is a treatise found in the cave of the Thousand Buddhas at Tun-huang which has been published only last year. It seems by an extraordinary chance to have nearly escaped us, having been apparently missed by all the European expeditions because it was written in Chinese characters. Hence it was removed to Pekin by orders of the Chinese Government under the impression that it was Buddhist in its nature, and has since been published in a Chinese publication founded for the purpose of preserving the Tun-huang MSS. by Mr Lo Tchen-yu, a Chinese scholar of great philosophical and archaeological attainments^[1198]. It is written on a continuous roll of paper over six metres in length, which has led unfortunately to the disappearance of the title and the first few words of the treatise. The remainder shows, however, that it purports to be a sort of allocution addressed by Manes, here as in the Khuastuanift called the “Legate of the Light,” to Adda or Addas, whom we know from the Christian documents before quoted to have been one of the three great missionaries said to have been dispatched by Manes into foreign countries to propagate his doctrine^[1199]. Of these three, Thomas, Hermas, and Addas, the last-named is said to have been allotted “Scythia,” which here as elsewhere doubtless means Turkestan, and his name therefore gives a reasonable air of authenticity to the text. The whole document is written in the form of a Buddhist sutra, and has been translated with an excellent commentary by the French Sinologist, M. Edouard Chavannes, with the help of M. Paul Pelliot, the leader of the French Expedition to Turkestan which probably first discovered it^[1200]. It entirely confirms the Mahommedan account of the teaching of Manes given above as well as that appearing in the Khuastuanift, and shows that St Augustine, alike in his authentic writings and in the tract de Haeresibus generally, although perhaps wrongfully, attributed to him, was drawing from well-informed sources. There are many grounds for thinking that it may originally have been written in Pahlavi, in which case it may have been 353contemporary with Manes himself; but it frequently makes use of Buddhist phrases often derived from the Sanskrit^[1201]. If the view here taken of the date of the original treatise is well founded, these may have been introduced by Manes during the time that the tradition mentioned above says that he spent in Turkestan for the elaboration of his doctrine. At all events they show that the practice of adapting his religion, as far as might be, to accord with that previously held by those among whom he was trying to make proselytes, goes back to the very origin of the sect.

This treatise was evidently written for edification rather than for instruction, and gives us a curious idea of the imagery by which the Manichaean teachers sought to enforce their teaching. The theory of the macrocosm and the microcosm, which teaches that the body of man is in itself a copy of the great world or universe, is here carried to excess^[1202], and we hear much of the “trees” which certain demons, previously sticking to the elements, says the treatise, “like a fly to honey, a bird to bird-lime, or a fish to the hook^[1203],” plant in the soul to the corruption and ultimate death of the better desires there implanted by the Light. The combat waged against the diabolic vices by the virtues is also described with great minuteness, but in language in which it is sometimes difficult to discover whether the author is consciously using allegory or not. Thus he says that the Devil, to whom he attributes the formation of the body of man, “shut up the Pure Ether” (one of the five light elements)

“in the city of the bones. He established (there) the dark thought in which he planted a tree of death. Then he shut up the Excellent 354Wind in the city of the nerves. He established (there) the dark feeling in which he planted a tree of death. Then he shut up the strength of the Light in the city of the veins. He established (there) the dark reflection in which he planted a tree of death. Then he shut up the Excellent Water in the city of the flesh. He established there the dark intellect, in which he planted a tree of death. Then he shut up the Excellent Fire in the city of the skin. He established there the dark reasoning in which he planted a tree of death. The Demon of Envy [the name generally used in the treatise for the Devil] planted these five poisonous trees of death in the five kinds of ruined places. He made them on every occasion deceive and trouble the original luminous nature, to draw in from without the nature which is stranger to it, and to produce poisonous fruit. Thus the tree of the dark thought grows within the city of the bones; its fruit is hatred: the tree of the dark feeling grows within the city of the nerves; its fruit is irritation: the tree of the dark reflection grows within the city of the veins; its fruit is luxury [wantonness]: the tree of the dark intellect grows within the city of the flesh; its fruit is anger: the tree of the dark reasoning grows within the city of the skin; its fruit is folly. It is thus then that of the five kinds of things which are the bones, the nerves, the veins, the flesh, and the skin, he made a prison and shut up there the five divisions of the First Principle of Light....^[1204]”

and so on. One might sometimes think one was reading John Bunyan and his Holy War with its defence of the town of Mansoul.

Most of the information contained in this Pekin Treatise has been dealt with in its place, but there are one or two matters concerning the cosmology of Manes which are of importance as showing the connection of his system with that of his predecessors. One regards the two great angels, here called Khrostag and Padvaktag^[1205] or the Appellant and Respondent, who are mentioned in the Khuastuanift (p. 343 supra) as bringing the 355light to be purified^[1206]. As has been said above, they show a great likeness to the two last Amshaspands of Zoroastrianism called Haurvetât and Ameretât; and like them are never mentioned separately, but always together^[1207]. Another point, already referred to, is that the Zoroastrian Sraôsha, the strong archangel who guards the world at night from the demons, is here mentioned several times by name^[1208]. Yet another point is that the two sexes are here said to have been formed by the devil out of jealousy and rage at beholding the sun and moon, and in imitation of the two luminaries. This is an entirely different story not only from those given above as Manichaean but from that given in the Great Announcement attributed to Simon Magus, and both differ from that told in the Pistis Sophia. It seems plain therefore that in attributing these various origins to the division of mankind into sexes, none of the three teachers was drawing upon tradition, but was merely inventing ad hoc.

There remains to be considered the history of the sect, as to which we have become better informed during the last few decades than at one time seemed possible^[1209]. Prohibited in the Roman Empire from the outset, they nevertheless made their way along both shores of the Mediterranean, and all the efforts of the Imperial authorities proved powerless to suppress them. Constantine directed an enquiry into their tenets, it is said, with some idea of making them into the religion of the State, 356and although he found this impracticable or unsafe, he seems to have been at first inclined to extend to them toleration^[1210]. His successors, however, quickly reverted to the earlier policy of Diocletian, and law after law of gradually increasing severity was passed until adherence to Manichaeism was finally punished with death and confiscation^[1211]. Pagans like the Emperor Julian and his friend and teacher Libanius were able occasionally to intervene in their favour; but no sect was ever more relentlessly persecuted, and the institution of the Dominican Inquisition can be traced back to the Quaestiones set up by Justinian and Theodora for their routing out and suppression^[1212]. In the case of what was practically a secret society, it would be difficult to say whether the Imperial measures would have availed to entirely destroy their propaganda, and it is possible that the Manichaean Church always maintained a sporadic existence in Europe^[1213] until events to be presently mentioned led to its revival in the Xth century. Meanwhile in the East, they remained on the confines of what was, up to the Mahommedan conquest in 642 A.D., the Persian Empire, and no doubt after their manner professed outward adherence to the Zoroastrian faith, while at the same time propagating their own doctrines in secret^[1214]. It 357was probably the Arab conquest which drove them to make their headquarters on the very borders of the civilized world as known to the ancients and in what is now Turkestan. Here a large part of the population seems to have been Buddhist, doubtless by reason of its dealings with China, and in the presence of that gentle faith—whose adherents boast that they have never yet shed blood to make a convert—the Manichaeans enjoyed complete toleration for perhaps the first time in their history^[1215]. They made use of it, as always, to send out missionaries into the neighbouring countries, and certainly obtained a foothold in China, where the Chinese seem to have confused them with the Christians. Their hatred of images doubtless caused the iconoclastic Emperors of the East to enter into relation with them, and we hear that Leo the Isaurian induced many of them to enter the Imperial armies. It was possibly these last whom the Emperor John Tzimiskes settled in what is now Bulgaria, whence, under the names of Paulicians, Bogomiles, and other aliases, they promoted that movement against the Catholic Church which provoked the Albigensian Crusades and the establishment of the Dominican Inquisition in the West^[1216]. To follow them there would be to travel beyond the scope of this book; and it need only be said in conclusion that they formed the bitterest and the most dangerous enemies that the Catholic Church in Europe ever had to face. It was possibly this which has led the rulers of the Church of Rome to brand nearly all later heresy with the name of Manichaean; yet it may be doubted whether some of their doctrines did not survive in Europe until the German Reformation, when they may have helped to inspire some of the wilder Protestant sects of the XVIth and XVIIth centuries. With the suppression of the Albigenses, however, the existence of Manichaeism as an organized faith comes to an end.

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