Note 1051 — Chapter XIII · MANES AND THE MANICHAEANS

These were also the “sons” of Darkness or Satan. See Bar Khôni (Pognon, p. 186). The reason that led the God of Light to send a champion into the lists was, according to Bar Khôni (Pognon, p. 185), that the five worlds of his creation were made for peace and tranquillity and could therefore not help him directly in the matter. Cf. St Augustine, de Natura Boni, c. XLII. But Manes doubtless found it necessary to work into his system the figure of the First Man which we have already seen prominent in the Ophite system. Cumont, Cosmog. Manich. p. 16, says few conceptions were more widely spread throughout the East. It is fully examined by Bousset, Hauptprobleme, in his IVth chapter, “Der Urmensch.” The First Man is, in the Chinese treatise lately found at Tun-huang in circumstances to be presently mentioned, identified with the Persian Ormuzd and the five elements are there declared to be his sons. See Chavannes and Pelliot, Un Traité Manichéen retrouvé en Chine, pt 1, Journal Asiatique, série X., t. XVIII. (1911), pp. 512, 513. The 12 elements which helped in his formation seem to be mentioned by no other author than En Nadîm. St Augustine, however, Contra Epistulam Fundamenti, c. 13, speaks of the “12 members of light.” The Tun-huang treatise also mentions “the 12 great kings of victorious form” whom it seems to liken to the 12 hours of the day. As the Pistis Sophia does the same with the “12 Aeons” who are apparently the signs of the Zodiac, it is possible that we here have a sort of super-celestial Zodiac belonging to the Paradise of Light, of which that in our sky is a copy. It should be remembered that in the Asiatic cosmogonies the fixed stars belong to the realm of good as the representatives of order, while the planets or “wanderers” are generally evil.