MANICHEAN MIDDLE KINGDOM

BY JAMES PALMER

MANICHEAN MIDDLE KINGDOM

BY JAMES PALMER

The tale of a long dead religion that changed China's political landscape

唐朝时，摩尼教从波斯传入中国。它深受佛教影响，更成就了传说中的明教。

HERETICAL TEXTS WERE ROOTED OUT WITH INQUISITORIAL INTENSITY, AIDED BY NETWORKS OF RELIGIOUS INFORMERS

In 228, in what is now Iraq, a boy of 12 had a vision. He saw the world divided into a great battle of good and evil, the sons of light caught within the fl esh of a wicked earth. The vision came to him again when he was 24, and he began preaching the word of his new faith.The boy was called Mani, a subject of the Persian Empire, which would eventually execute him as a heretic in 276. By then, the religion he founded, Manichaeism (摩尼教), already had millions of followers across the Empire and beyond. A few centuries later, it would reach into China, becoming, brief l y, a competitor to Daoism and Buddhism for the souls of the Chinese people. It would survive centuries of persecution, only to eventually be driven extinct, remembered only by scholars.

Mani's beliefs were a hectic mix of Buddhism, Zoroastrianism (the ancient dualistic religion of Persia), and Christianity, inf l uenced by Gnostic Christian texts and apocryphal Jewish writings. As with Islam, born under much the same circumstances, Manicheans venerated earlier prophets, especially Jesus.

Its cosmology was fantastical, complex, and occasionally baff l ing. At the beginning of time, said Mani, there was the World of Light and the World of Darkness—one pure good, the other pure wickedness. They competed in a series of weird and wonderful battles, where armed angels campaigned against a myriad of freakish demons. The human body, in the form of Adam and Eve, was created by Darkness, but the soul came from the World of Light and could be freed into its divine origin. The stark division between light and darkness gives us the term Manichean in English today, meaning to see the world in black and white.

But Manicheans rarely focused on evil, though their legends sometimes seem closer to Jack Kirby comic books than anything else, with their stories of heroic battles, incestuous copulation, and bizarre bad guys. In practice, the faith was a pacif i st and ascetic one, sometimes to the point of extremes, with priests abstaining from sex, meat, and even ostentatious clothing. Among ordinary believers, it was a religion of community, cleansing, and devotion.

From its origins in the Middle East, Manichaeism reached out to the rest of the world. In North Africa, the future Saint Augustine was a Manichean before he converted to Christianity. It was a time of missionary fervor across Eurasia. Jewish, Buddhist, Islamic, Manichean, and Christian missionaries fanned out across Asia, yet Judaism's period of proselytising was much briefer than the others. They reached the furthest corners of the earth; Christian monks were praying in the high places of Tibet as early as the sixth century, where in future years local believers would carve crosses into rocks and write divinations to “the god called Jesus Messiah”. In Europe, Manichaeism was soon stamped out by a dominant Christianity, although Manichean ideas surfaced in Gnostic heresies right up to the 13th century.

In Asia, however, the followers of Mani competed in a much more diverse and competitive spiritual marketplace. Manichaeism's great coup in Asia was the conversion of the Uyghur Khanate, a massive Turkic Central Asian power that spanned from the Caspian Sea to Mongolia. Tengri Bogu, the Uyghur Khan, was converted by Iranian Manichean preachers and declared it the off i cial religion of his empire in 762. The off i cial memorial of his conversion praises the religion for turning the Uyghur from “blood sacrif i ces to a region of vegetarians, from a state which indulged in excessive killing to a nation that exhorts righteousness.”

His enthusiasm for Manichaeism may have been a way of countering the inf l uence of Tang Dynasty (618-907) China, the Khanate's most feared rival; China's neighbours to the north and west looked for ways to forestall the Middle Kingdom's cultural and economic inf l uence. But paradoxically, ended up giving Manichaeism a way into China itself.

Manicheanism initially won a frosty reception in China. The religion had seen a boost in China, following an inf l ux of Persian refugees and traders in the early eighth century, but in 732, its practice was strictly limited to foreigners, and locals were forbidden from converting.“The doctrine of Mani is basically a perverse belief…and will mislead the masses,” wrote the imperial edict banning its practice. It wasn't just advocates of indigenous Chinese ideologies that feared the coming of the new doctrines, however; Buddhists, who saw the Manicheans as rivals for the souls (and the donations) of Chinese, were often among its fi ercest opponents. In return, Manicheans claimed that while Buddhism might be the “Great Vessel”, theirs was the “Superior Vessel”.

AS WITH MANY OF HISTORY'S LOSERS, OUR RECORD OF MANICHAEISM IN CHINA IS WRITTEN MAINLY BY ITS ENEMIES

Influences of the Buddha of Light clearly appear in Manichean beliefs

China advocates often boast of the country's supposed history of religious tolerance. But in truth, the treatment of religion only looks good compared to the barbarities of medieval Europe. The marketplace of divinity was fi ercely competitive, and the losers in the competition for the court's affections suffered grim fates. Heretical texts were rooted out with inquisitorial intensity, aided by networks of religious informers, though exactly what distinguished the heretical from the heterodox varied wildly year to year. Yet the Tang were keen to stay on the good side of the Khanate. The Turkic peoples, initially the great rivals of China in the early years of the Tang—although the Taizong Emperor (唐太宗), the dynasty's co-founder, rumoured to be a quarter-Turkic himself—became a mainstay of the regime, hired to fi ght the countries' battles elsewhere. As a result, the Tang turned towards a reluctant tolerance of Manichaeism, and soldiers and white-clad, long-haired priests alike preached the word of Mani across China. Manichean temples became common in Chinese cities, often in the Uyghur districts.

During its travels across Asia, Manichaeism seems to have picked up many Buddhist ideas, and to have shed some of the harsh dualism and Gnosticism that made the faith famous. But followers distinguished themselves from their religious rivals by their vegetarianism, far more strictly practiced than among Buddhists, their refusal to shave their heads like Buddhists, their veneration of Mani and Jesus, and the careful copying of their scriptures, to the extent that texts “separated by four centuries and the whole of the Eurasian landmass”, are virtually identical.

As with many of history's losers, our record of Manichaeism in China is written mainly by itsenemies. But it's clear that the religion, like Buddhism, appealed to some people in a way that the formalistic rites of Chinese worship didn't. The emphasis on personal purity, the strong community of believers, and the morally clear, if supernaturally complex, preaching of righteousness won the faith many followers from outside the Uyghur and Persian communities where it started.

The Chinese Manichean Compendium. Some of the most complete works of Manichean beliefs are found in China.

The religious competition between Buddhists, Daoists, Manicheans and others was also a contest of magic. Soothsayers, seers, summoners, and sages sought to outdo each other in wondrous feats, from the casting out of demons and the breaking of the evil eye to the conjuration of gods to converse with nobles or congregations. Manicheans became particularly known for astrology and exorcism, including sometimes being asked to employ their magical skills on behalf of the government.

To our eye, the tales of magic and miracles, of false faiths defeated by pure doctrines and evil spirits cast out, of fortunes told and minds read, of great wonders of endurance performed to demonstrate the strength of belief, may all seem like delusion or chicanery. Indeed, many Chinese scholars were equally skeptical, pointing to sleight-of-hand, confederates, shadow-puppets, and mechanical ingenuity as the source of marvels, especially among the sects they disliked. But among both the public and the elite, these claims were not only credible, but a major source of religious legitimacy.

Manichaeism's ability to compete on a level playing fi eld, was soon severely curtailed. After the power of the Khanate was broken in the middle of the ninth century, however, the court took a hard swing against Manichaeism. In 843, another imperial edict closed all but three temples. Many temples were demolished, or converted to Buddhist or Daoist usage; today only one known example survives, Cao'an Temple (草庵寺) in Jinjiang City, Fujian Province, with its statue of Mani, the “Buddha of Light” (摩尼光佛) intact. Led by a growing fear of foreign inf l uence, especially religious, the persecution worsened. An order from the center went out, ordering the Manichean priests to be massacred; hundreds were killed across the country, and others rounded up and sent on death marches back to what was left of the Uyghur.

The campaign against the Manicheans was a small part of a far greater persecution of Buddhists. Emperor Wuzong (唐武宗) was a keen Daoist, primarily because of the faith's promise of physical immortality. Daoists and Confucians combined against the “foreign religions”, resulting in the forced laicization of over 200,000 Buddhist monks and nuns, and the closure of all but the most prominent temples.

During the collapse of the Tang in the 10th century, the powerbase of Manichaeism, such as it was, shifted from the sophisticated cities of the north to the more isolated rural towns of the south. Quite what prompted this shift is hard to ferret out, perhaps a wave of refugees, perhaps simply that the grasp of the state was weaker in the hills of Fujian Province than the streets of the capital. With the conversion of the Uyghur to Islam, however, Manichaeism's support from elsewhere was no more, and it faded away in North China.

Even in the south, though, it was becoming a very different kind of faith. Buddhism's reach was strong enough to allow it to weather the ninth century persecutions. For the Manicheans and others, however, the attacks drove them underground. They entered the strange world of whispered doctrines, midnight gatherings, and magical powers. Manicheans acquireda reputation as powerful, if sometimes malevolent, sorcerers. Popular tales told of how Manicheans “excelled in magic” and had mastered numerous occult arts.

Zhu Yuanzhang, the monk turned founder of the Ming Dynasty, ramped up persecution of the Manicheans

MANICHEANS WERE OFTEN IDENTIFIED AS “A KIND OF BUDDHIST” BY THE AUTHORITIES, WHILE MANICHEANS THEMSELVES ADAPTED THEIR BELIEFS TO THE PREVAILING CULTURAL MILIEU

Complicated factors underlay the sudden turn against Buddhism, Manichaeism, and other “foreign religions”. One was a growing conservatism and xenophobia among the Chinese elite, fearful of their own authority being undermined. Manicheans' refusal to venerate their ancestors seems to have been a point of particular contention. An increased emphasis on Confucian dogma brought an intellectual orthodoxy, enforced at the point of a sword that undercut the eclectic intellectual mix of the Tang's fi rst two centuries.

As with many religious persecutions in Europe, from the pogroms against Jews to the French king's turn against the Knights Templar, money was also an important factor. Huge amounts of wealth were seized from the Buddhist monasteries, and the income from over 150,000 serfs, which had previously gone to the monks, now went to the state instead. Manichean temples may have also acted as banks, given the Uyghur's reputation as money-lenders, making them a tempting target for cash-strapped off i cials.

But most powerful may have been the fear of religious revolt. Millenarian dreams had inspired rebels in China for centuries; visions of the world turned upside down, the poor uplifted, and the cruel and powerful cast down. Manichaeism, with its powerful sense of a world divided by good and evil, was a clear source for rebellious ideas.

Several revolts were certainly associated with Manicheans, at least in latter tellings. The Wu I rebellion of 920, and its later revival in 939, was blamed on “a gang of Manicheans”by a Buddhist historian, but it seems to have actually been a Buddhist sect. And in the last years of the Song dynasty (960-1279), a fi erce rebellion sprung up around Hangzhou, led by Fang La (方腊). Although it lasted only a year, from 1120 to 1121, the rebels seized large parts of the southeast. Later texts would claim Fang as a Manichean, but it looks more as if other Manichean-inspired rebellions were wrapped in with his.

Even opponents of Manicheaism sometimes thought the persecutions were too much. “Every time someone is prosecuted,” wrote Confucian off i cial Zhuang Zhu in 1133. “Many others are implicated. When the property of an offender is conf i scated and his whole family exiled, the punishment differs little from death. As a result they are united in their effort to resist the authorities. Local off i cials fear them and dare not press home the charges against them. Thus the proscriptions have the opposite effect of causing their numbers to increase.”

But even at periods of heavy persecution, more “respectable”Manicheans could win protection from the authorities elsewhere. Just a decade after the Fang La revolt, as the Southern Song (1127-1279) intensif i ed their persecutions of heretics, a Manichean temple was able to win recognition fromthe authorities, protected, perhaps, by its long-standing establishment and thoroughly conservative nature.

It's often impossible to tell exactly what beliefs a rebel group, a supposed cult, or even just a cluster of peaceful worshippers held. “The religion of light,” for instance, could refer to Manicheans, Nestorian Christians, and heterodox Buddhists. One term coined by Song off i cials lumped together all manner of perceived threats to the state, “vegetarian demon worshippers (吃菜事魔)”. Manicheans were often identif i ed as “a kind of Buddhist”by the authorities, while Manicheans themselves adapted their beliefs to the prevailing cultural milieu. “Lao Zi went to the West,” wrote one, referring to the semi-mythical founder of Daoism, “where he became Mani-Buddha.”Several nominally Buddhist or Daoist temples today still have buildings labelled “Manichean hall”.

Fine distinctions may not have mattered to the worshippers themselves. As with New Age devotees in California today, lumping together Hinduism, Buddhism, and the fantasies of the 1960s, the streams of foreign thought and heterodox thinking fl owed and merged, resulting in Buddhist groups with Manichean language, Manichean groups that adopted Daoist deities, and Christians who believed Jesus had come, like the Buddha, to break the cycle of samsara.

For Manicheans, Zoroastrians, Christians, and Jews, their nature as foreign religions, their frequent persecution, and the ultimate belief in a supreme being, may well have drawn groups—that in Europe would have gladly had each other drawn and quartered—much closer together. When Marco Polo visited a group of Manicheans in the 14th century, he was easily able to persuade them that they were really Christians, with their memories of “three apostles from the West” and belief in one supreme deity. Equally, a bishop who died in 1313 is identif i ed as being “a supervisor of the Christians, Manicheans, and Nestorians” on his tombstone.

The Mongol conquests, so disastrous for millions of Chinese, were the salvation of the Manicheans. The Mongols were roughly tolerant of many religions, and many of them were Nestorian Christians, a tradition fi rmly established in the country since the seventh century, although their version of Christianity freely mixed in shamanic elements. Genghis Khan's sons married Christian daughters of other tribes, and the Mongols would frequently spare Christian minorities during their conquests, or even single them out for special treatment.

Manichaeism was close enough to Christianity to be familiar to the Mongols, and they offered shelter to it, probably under the authority of Nestorian leaders. But this tolerance would prove oddly costly to the Yuan Dynasty (1206-1368), the new imperial rulers of China, in the long run—and equally deadly to the religion itself.

In the last years of the Yuan Dynasty, Chinese rebels competed to cast off the Mongol yoke and found a new order. The source of many of the revolutions were the religious cults and secret societies that crisscrossed the country, Manicheanism among them. The eventual winner of the power struggles of the 1360s, Zhu Yuanzhang, (朱元璋), had been a novice monk before his monastery was forced to expel him and others for lack of funds to feed them. Becoming a wandering beggar, he fell in with Buddhist rebels, who he skilfully built into a fi ghting force that eventually triumphed over both the Mongols and other Chinese factions, exploiting apocalyptic prophecies to raise his troops. He probably came in some contact with Manichean ideas during his time as a religious rebel; indeed, the name he gave to his new dynasty, the Ming (1368-1644), the “Dynasty of Light,” echoed the term often used for Manicheans.

But after Zhu announced the foundation of his dynasty, taking on his reign-name, Hongwu (洪武), he turned fi ercely against the very groups that had helped him rise to power. Fearful that others might exploit them as he had done, and eager to establish a fi rm new order, he tightened religious persecution to an extent not seen for centuries. Members of “the Maitreya Sect, or the White Lotus Sect, or the sect of the Venerable Lord of Light ( a reference to Manicheans) or the White Cloud Sect, etc,”he wrote in an edict of 1370, “who indulge in heterodox practices and distort the truth…their leaders shall be strangled to death and their followers shall receive a hundred strokes of the cane and be exiled a thousand miles away.”

Despite the fi nal wave of persecutions, the Manicheans clung on in pockets until at least the middle of the 15th century, and perhaps even into the 16th. But by 1600, they were effectively extinct, a religion that had once spanned Asia reduced into a few memories and names. Even among scholars, they were given little consideration until the discovery of the vast cache of texts at Dunhuang, Gansu Province in 1904, skilfully plundered by archaeologist Aurel Stein, opened up a world of Central Asian learning and worship long lost.

But in Chinese popular literature, the association of Manicheanism with sorcery continued. Many tales depict evil magicians with Manichean trappings. Louis Cha, better known as Jin Yong (金庸), the most famouswuxiaauthor of the 20th century, played with this tradition to create his own organization of heroic “Ming Cult” (明教) fi ghters, defeating evil with their “Martial Arts of the Holy Flame Tablets”, but falsely perceived as evil by most other martial artists. It's a strange remembrance for a sect of pacif i st vegetarians, but no odder than the rest of their history of rebellions, magic, and persecution.