23.3 IRAN UNDER ŠĀBUHR I. RELIGION AND ŠĀBUHR I’S PLACE IN IRAN’S “NATIONAL TRADITION”.
In this post I will address one of the most “controversial” aspects of Šābuhr I’s reign: his religious policy, and how this was probably the reason that Šābuhr I became almost shunned from Iranian “national tradition”, as reflected in Firdawsī’s great epic the
Šāh-nāmah. But first, I will try to explain two important points: what’s the “Iranian national tradition” and what kind of religion was Zoroastrianism, because I think that these are two concepts that are either completely unknown or misunderstood by a modern western public.
Today, Iran is a state in the modern sense, the Islamic Republic of Iran. But since Sasanian times and perhaps earlier the peoples living on the Iranian plateau have shared a collective identity framed around a series of myths whose origins predate the intrusion of the Aryan peoples into Central Asia and their division into Iranians and Indo-Aryans. These legendary myths and tales became intermingled with Zoroastrian sacred tradition to the point where it became impossible to distinguish between “Aryan secular lore” and “Zoroastrian doctrine”, they became just intricately mixed common tradition. This tradition in time became so deeply entrenched that even the Islamic conquest, which made tabula rasa with the preexisting religions, cultural traditions and even languages of the Late Antique Middle East, could wipe it out. Out of all the peoples conquered by the first wave of Islamic conquests, Iranians were the only ones who did not only avoid becoming completely acculturated, but they managed in a time frame of three centuries to impose their own language (New Persian) as the prestige language of the Islamic world between Egypt and India, and to “colonize” the state structures and courtly life of the Abbasid Caliphate with their own practices and customs which dated back to Sasanian times.
This “resurgence” of Iranian (or, in Islamic medieval terms, “Persianate”) culture is signaled by the great milestone of Firdawsī’s monumental epic poem, the
Šāh-nāmah (the
Book of Kings) which he wrote during the late X and early XI centuries CE in Khorasan, first for the Samanid court and finally for the Turkish Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni. Firdawsī himself was the scion of a family of landed gentry, the old Sasanian
dehgānān, which bemoaned in his epic the loss of the ancient greatness of Iran. In his magnum opus, Firdawsī recovered and recycled all the old Iranian tradition and reissued it again under a now acceptable monotheistic, Islamic garb. Although some scholars have pretended to see Zoroastrian elements in Firdawsī’s epic, he was a Muslim and his work is permeated by Islamic monotheism. But at the same time, he went as far as to even provide an “alternative” history of the Creation of the world which does not accord with the Quran and Abrahamic tradition at all; and which is totally Irano-centric and reuses all the ancient Aryan myths, combined with tales originated from the minstrels (
gosān) of the Arsacid era and historical written works from the Sasanian era, especially the now lost
Xwadāy-Nāmag (the
Book of Lords), written during the VI or early VII century at the Sasanian court.
Thus, Firdawsī’s epic draws from three sources for its narrative:
- Ancient “Aryan” myths which are even pre-Zoroastrian in origin, and which were eventually co-opted into Zoroastrian cosmogony, but which also survived as oral myths and traditions among the populace at large.
- The large and ancient corpus of Iranian epic stories, which was composed in Arsacid times by traveling minstrels (the gosān) in Pahlavi and mostly in eastern Iran, and which survived again at popular level by means of oral tradition (probably still being told by professional storytellers).
- The “official history” of the Sasanian dynasty, as compiled in the Xwadāy-Nāmag. This book was probably first written under Khusrō I in the VI century CE and revised for the last time under the last Sasanian king Yazdgerd III in the VII century CE. This was a propagandistic work written in Middle Persian in the milieu of the Sasanian royal court and it’s been lost. But early Islamic authors often used it and mentioned its existence; it was translated into Arabic in the first half of the VIII century CE by the Iranian convert to Islam Ibn al-Muqaffa, and this translation was used by several later authors who wrote both in Arabic and New Persian as their main source about pre-Islamic Iranian history.
Parallel to this “Islamized” tradition, there is another tradition, which after the Muslim conquest of Iran grew ever less relevant and which has only arrived to our days in a partial form, in the
Pahlavi Books that form the religious supplement to the Zoroastrian Avesta. This is the Zoroastrian tradition, which is especially valuable because it had its origins among the Zoroastrian priesthood of Sasanian times and was independent from the
Xwadāy-Nāmag tradition; in this sense it offers the only example of an alternative storyline of the Sasanian dynasty independent of the propagandistic efforts of the Sasanian kings (the Zoroastrian priesthood was probably the only organization strong and independent enough in Sasanian Iran to achieve such a feat). And it’s obviously not impartial either, because it transmits the views and opinions of the Zoroastrian priesthood. Another important characteristic of this tradition is that while the
Xwadāy-Nāmag was written during Khusrō I’s reign probably using oral traditions, the priestly tradition preserves bits and fragments which are much older than that, and probably using written sources contemporary to the facts.
The surprising fact is that Šābuhr I “the Great” is almost ignored in the
Šāh-nāmah, where Firdawsī basically describes him as “Ardaxšīr I’s son” and then proceeds to conflate him with Šābuhr II (actually basically Firdawsī tells a fanciful biography of Šābuhr II and attributes to him several of the victories achieved by Šābuhr I, who basically disappears from the work). And the
Šāh-nāmah’s diffident attitude is reflected in the
Dēnkard and
Bundahišn, in what is an even more surprising lack of enthusiasm about the figure of this king, because as I wrote before, Zoroastrian priests had direct access to written sources dating back to the III century CE (the Zoroastrian tradition never makes the mistake of conflating two different kings in one like Firdawsī does, a clear sign that the priests managed more reliable sources).
This coincidence is surprising to say the least, considering the great successes of Šābuhr I’s reign, but the fact is that the title “the Great” was given to this king by modern historiography, not by the Iranian tradition. What did Šābuhr I do in order to deserve this cool treatment in Sasanian historiography (almost like a
damnatio memoriae)? The answer lies probably in his religious policies: Šābuhr I protected Mani, one of the two great heresiarchs of Sasanian history (together with Mazdak) and the
mowbedān never forgave him for this.
In order to understand the relationship that probably developed between Šābuhr I, Mani and the
mowbedān, I think that first it’s necessary to try to summarize the nature of Sasanian Zoroastrianism and especially of early Sasanian Zoroastrianism, which is no easy task. I’ll try to be as brief as possible but I’m afraid that in order to be able to make some sense this will have to be a bit long. Rather than entering into a description of Zoroastrianism, its doctrines and practices, I’ll try to put together a summary history of the evolution of Zoroastrianism until the times of Šābuhr I.
Scholarly study of Zoroastrianism has seen a considerable upheaval in the last thirty years. Ever since the XVIII century, when the Avesta was first translated into French and English, western scholars have approached Zoroastrianism as if it were yet another Abrahamic, monotheistic religion, centered around a doctrine expressed in a revealed Holy Scripture of divinely inspired origins. But recent studies during the last three decades have altered significantly this vision. For my summary I will follow the opinions of Harvard professor Prods Oktor Skjærvø in his book
The Spirit of Zoroastrianism and his paper
The Videvdad: its Ritual-Mythical Significance, included in
The Age of the Parthians, part of
The Idea of Iran series, edited by Vesta Sarkosh Curtis.
Zoroastrianism is a very ancient religious tradition, although only in later times did it become a single “religion” as we would understand it in western terms by analogy with Islam or Christianity. Its religious literature is written in several languages: Old Avestan, Young Avestan, Middle Persian, Farsi and Gujarati.
Remains of the fire temple of Bazeh Khur in Khorasan, dating to the late Arsacid era.
Of this literature, the sacred scripture proper is the Avesta, which is divided into Old and Young Avesta, written respectively in Old and Young Avestan. As Skjærvø remarks, the Avesta is not a holy scripture in the Abrahamic sense. For starters, of all the manuscripts of the Avesta that existed among the Zoroastrians before the XIX century, there’s not a single example of a comprehensive volume that included all the sacred texts. They were always partial compilations, and their textual transmission can’t be traced further back than 1000 CE. So, rather than imagining the Avesta as a holy book, it would be more accurate to think of it as a “holy tradition”, formed by a wide variety of texts which were composed in very different periods of time.
Secondly, as Skjærvø notes, the sacred texts of the Avesta came into light as oral literature, and survived for a very long time as an oral tradition; they were written down in the (especially created for the task) Avestan script during the V century CE, or perhaps even later.
For reconstructing and understanding the history of Zoroastrianism, linguistics and literary studies are fundamental, as there’s very little remaining evidence available outside the texts themselves. Today it’s widely acknowledged among scholars that the oldest part of the Avesta (the Old Avesta) was composed in the late second millennium BCE, between 1500 and 1000 BCE, somewhere in Central Asia. Scholars have arrived to this conclusion because Old Avestan is a language very similar to the language of the
Rigveda, and so it must have appeared roughly at a similar point in time. Old Avestan is an eastern Iranian language (like Sogdian, Bactrian, Pashto or Yaghnobi), and by the timeframe of the composition of the Avesta, Iranian tribes had probably not yet entered the Iranian plateau from Central Asia; the oldest references to Iranian peoples in the plateau come from Assyrian royal records of the IX century BCE, which refer to Medes and Persians; other tribes/peoples entered the plateau late, between this date and the VI-V centuries BCE.
The Old Avesta is formed by the five
Gāthās and the
Yasna Haptanghāiti which are recited in the
Yasna, the main Zoroastrian ritual. The
Gāthās have been considered traditionally to be the work of Zarathustra himself, but current scholars disagree with this tradition; as Skjærvø notes in his translation of the
Gāthās, in them Zarathustra “talks” sometimes in the first person, but most times he’s addressed to in the second person, or referred to in the third person. As Skjærvø notes, the
Gāthās are very complex works of poetry, but unless the syntax, grammar and vocabulary of the text is coerced to the extreme (as has been the habit of scholars for the last two centuries), the very text of the
Gāthās leaves little doubt that Zarathustra is not their author, but as Skjærvø points out, a mythical figure, probably the first poet-sacrificer of the Aryan legend/tradition, who is invoked by the author or authors of the text.
Recitation of Yasna 28 (beginning of the Ahunuvaiti Gāthā).
This means that the
Gāthās are apocryphal texts, probably the work of several authors in their origin, and which were later “reworked” even more during their oral transmission. But it should be remembered that according to modern Zoroastrian tradition (and it was probably also so in Sasanian times), they were dictated by Ahura Mazdā to Zarathustra himself. While the
Gāthās are hymns in verse, the
Yasna Haptanghāiti is a collection of seven hymns in prose; they make no reference to Zarathustra, but they contain valuable references to the religious world of the Aryan people in which the Zoroastrian tradition appeared.
The Old Avestan texts were transmitted orally for centuries, and during the first centuries it was probably deemed permissible (perhaps even expected to) that the priest/poet/sacrificer who recited them embellished them and added his own personal touches during the ritual reciting of the text. But at one given point in time, the text became “crystallized” (as it’s called in the theory of oral literature), and no further changes were allowed. Skjærvø correlates this development with the moment in time when Old Avestan had become a dead language and was no longer properly understood, and so in fear of twisting its meaning or committing blasphemy, the priests no longer allowed themselves the slightest change, and the Old Avestan texts began to be recited by memory without fully understanding them, and the transmission between each generation of priests became also a matter of strict phonetic memorization. Skjærvø offers a date around 1000 BCE for the crystallization of Old Avestan texts, based on the estimated date when according to linguistics Old Avestan evolved into Young Avestan.
The Young Avesta is quite longer than the Old Avesta. The texts that form it are dated by Skjærvø between 1000 BCE and 500 BCE. It includes:
- The twenty-one Yašts, hymns to divinities or divinized concepts.
- The Vendidad, a collection of rituals and practices to “keep the demons (Avestan daēwa) away”.
- The Visperad, which rather than a text on its own is a collection of passages that are used in substitution of the usual Yasna passages when the Yasna is turned into a Visperad ritual.
- Several other texts or text collections of minor importance, like the Siroza or the Gahs.
What I wrote above about the “crystallization” of the Old Avestan texts also applies to the Young Avestan ones. Skjærvø considers that by 500 BCE (around the times of Darius I) the Young Avestan corpus also became fixed in form.
Recitation of the Bahrām yašt (Yašt 14) in honor of Verethragna.
Traditional Zoroastrianism was a religion centered around ritual; the main function of the Avestan texts was (and still is) to be recited in the daily
Yasna ritual, which takes place every day at sunrise. The
Yasna ritual consists in the recitation of a long series of 72 parts drawn from the Old and Young Avesta. The five
Gāthās, the
Yasna Haptanghāiti and the
Yašts are included in their entirety. The
Yasna ritual is a ritual whose function is to reproduce the new day after a period of darkness. It is to be timed so that the recital of
Yasna 62, the hymn to the fire, coincides with sunrise. In the Old Iranian cosmological scheme, its function was to help place Ahura Mazdā back in command of the universe.
This process involved the ritual recreation of a microcosmic version of the macrocosm. It was in turn patterned on the myth of the primordial creation of the world. The
Yasna text therefore takes its participants through this recreation process. It begins with the reconstruction and re-ordering of all the elements in the worlds of thought and of living beings. In the
Yasna, this re-ordering process is followed by the story of Zarathustra’s birth from the
haoma ritual and several other texts containing important elements of the primordial sacrifice performed by Ahura Mazdā at the beginning of the living world. It culminates in the preparation and offering of the
haoma drink, at which point, presumably, Zarathustra is reborn in the persona of the sacrificer and proceeds to recite his
Gāthās. According to Zoroastrian tradition, these are the holy texts that Zarathustra received from Ahura Mazdā, who had recited them in the beginning in order to cast down the Evil One and which Zarathustra in turn recites with the same effect. The recitation of the holy texts comes to an end with the prayer to
Airiiaman, the god of peace and healing.
The
Yasna then continues with a hymn to the great martial deity,
Sraoša, who battles and overcomes the powers of darkness. There follow hymns to the fire and the heavenly waters, signifying the rebirth of the sun and the new day. The
Yasna ritual is therefore a re-ordering ritual, which, when successful, will help Ahura Mazdā re-engender the ordered cosmos, characterized by sunlight, life, and fertility. It complements Ahura Mazdā’s efforts in the world of thought, where he fights the evil powers together with his divine helpers. Of these divine helpers, one of the most important is Sraoša, who, with his fearless club, is the opponent assigned to Wrath with the bloody club. Wrath, in fact, is probably the mythical embodiment of the night sky and the principal representative of the powers of darkness. At sunset, Wrath smites Ahura Mazdā’s creation and bathes it in blood, but he is in turn himself struck down and bled by Sraoša (so important was Sraoša to ancient Iranians that he was coopted into the Islamic array of angels in heaven). The other crucial helper is Airiiaman, god of peace and healing. The result of the
Yasna ritual is thus the re-ordering and rebirth of the cosmos.
Daily life was also regulated by endless practices and rituals norms intended to avoid the
daēwas, and civilian law was also written along the lines of Zoroastrian religious laws, with priests acting as judges.
As after 500 BCE (according to Skjærvø) Avestan was a dead language, Zoroastrian priests found themselves in need of some kind of commentaries or exegetical tradition to help them understand the full (or “correct”) meaning of the Avestan texts. These commentaries are known as
Zand. With the exception of the
Yašts, all Avestan text have their accompanying Zand. This practice began already in Young Avestan times, as there remain three Zand written in Young Avestan about Old Avestan texts. There were Zands composed in all the Iranian languages spoken by the ancient Iranian peoples, but only the Middle Persian ones have survived, and are thus considered “the” Zand.
By the first centuries of the Islamic era, a large corpus of oral traditions had been accumulated, which was referred to in Middle Persian as the Tradition (
dēn). Even after writing became common, oral tradition was considered superior, and Zoroastrian authors more often referred to what is “said in the Tradition” than to what is “written”.
I’ll try now to give a (very general) idea of what were the precepts of ancient Zoroastrianism (which are not the same as the ones followed by modern Parsis, which have changed and adapted their faith considerably since the XIX century to adapt it to the modern world). In my attempt I will follow closely the description offered by Prods Oktor Skjærvø in his (highly recommendable) book
The Spirit of Zoroastrianism.
The Avesta describes a universe divided between the worlds of gods and living beings and caught up in a battle between good and evil. The world of gods, that “of thought” can only be apprehended by thought, while this world, that “of living beings” or the world “with bones”, is conceived and born as a living being. The two worlds (Avestan
ahu) oscillate between the states of good and evil, light and darkness, health and sickness, life and death and so on. In this dualistic scenario, all things in the universe, including gods and men, belong in one or the other camp in the conflict. The return to the state of light and life will happen when, strengthened by the sacrifices offered by humans, Ahura Mazdā regains command of the universe, the good deities overcome the evil ones, and the universe is healed and reborn. The origins of good and evil are two Spirits (Avestan
manyu “mental impulse, inspiration”), depicted as “twin sleeps” (sleeping things), presumably twin fetuses embodying contrasting and irreconcilable potentials for good and evil. When these two Spirits “come together” (in battle), the next existence will be determined. At that point, all beings, including the gods, must declare for good or evil by choosing either Order or Chaos, as must every Mazdean believer by uttering the
Frawarānē as stated in
Yasna 10.16:
I belong to the sustainer of Order, not to the one possessed by the Lie, and that will be so until in the end, when the victory between the two spirits comes about.
The good Spirit is “Life-giving” (Avestan
spenta manyu), a characteristic of all good entities in the world of thought. The underlying idea is “swelling,” that is, with the juices of fertility and fecundity. Thus, in the Old Avesta, the purpose of the battle is to revitalize the world by making it
fraša “juicy”. The other spirit is
angra, which according to Skjærvø’s translation may originally have meant “dark, black” in the
Gāthās, but
Angra Mainyu was already being rendered as “Evil Spirit” in the young Avestan texts. In the Young Avesta, the other world is thought of as controlled by one or the other spirit and is called “that of the Spirits” (Avestan
manyawa).
Ahura Mazdā’s first world was an ordered world, where everything was in its proper place. The principle of the cosmic order was Avestan
aša (or
erta, cognate of Old Indic
rta, as used in the
Rigveda), translated by Skjærvø as “order”, and whose literal meaning would probably be “something (harmoniously) fitted together.” It was produced by Ahura Mazdā’s though, and its visible form is the day-lit sky with the sun. The opposing principle is the cosmic deception or Lie (
drug,
druj), which deceives men and gods as to the true nature of the universe, making them think the wicked are good. Those on the side of Order are called “sustainers of Order,” those on the side of the Lie “possessed by the Lie”.
Cosmos and chaos are also represented by Good Thought as the sunlit day sky, contrasted with Wrath as the dark, sunless night sky, in which the deities of the good creation are seen as stars battling against darkness. The pair
aša/drug clearly continues for Skjærvø the old Indo-European concept of cosmos and chaos. In Iranian tradition , the original state of the universe before Ahura Mazdā ordered it was darkness, implicit in the statement that Ahura Mazdā caused the spaces to be suffused by light. Chaos was a subversion of Ahura Mazdā’s cosmos, caused by the supremacy of the powers of evil when strengthened by the sacrifices of those opposed to Ahura Mazdā, including evil poets and sacrificers (the Gathic
kawi and
karpan). At the end of time,
aša will “have bones,” and the cosmos will be permanently ruled by
aša.
The supreme deity in the Avesta is Ahura Mazdā, literally, “the All-knowing (ruling) Lord”, where according to Skjærvø
maz-dāh is an adjective meaning approximately “he who places (everything) in his mind”). In the
Gāthās, the two epithets are still independent words, while, in the Young Avesta, Ahura Mazdā had become a single name, and it is doubtful whether the original meaning was still known. By the Achaemenid period, the name was one word, Ahuramazdā, which in turn became Middle Persian Ohrmazd, Hormazd, and similar. Ahura Mazdā ordered the cosmos and upholds the cosmic Order, and he is the benevolent ruler of the ordered cosmos. He is said to be the father of several gods: in the
Gāthās, Good Thought, Order, and
Ārmaiti–Humility; in the Young Avesta, all the Life-giving Immortals, as well as several other deities. His abode is the House of Song (
garō-dmāna,
garō-nmāna). Ahura Mazdā also sees to it that his fellow deities, who are all needed for victory over the forces of darkness and the good functioning of the cosmos, receive their share of sacrifices and praise; by sacrificing to them himself, he provides Zarathustra with the model for humans to do likewise.
According to the Young Avesta, Ahura Mazdā had brought to life the Life-giving Immortals (Avestan
ameša spentas) through his primordial sacrifice, which were:
- Good (Best) Thought (Avestan vohu manah, Middle Persian wahuman, wahman).
- Best Order (aša vahišta, Middle Persian ašwahišt, ardwahišt, urdwahišt).
- Well-deserved Command (khšathra uuairiya, Middle Persian khšahrewar, šahrewar).
- Life-giving Humility (spentā ārmaiti, Middle Persian spandarmad).
- Wholeness (haurwatāt, Middle Persian hordad)
- Undyingness (amertatāt, amertāt, Middle Persian amurdad),
The Old and Young Avesta also name a long list of gods who inhabit the world of thought and fight alongside Ahura Mazdā in his cosmic struggle, some of them are:
- Airyaman was the god of healing and harmonious unions, already named in the Gāthās.
- Already mentioned in the Old Avesta, in the Young Avesta Sraoša, “with the defiant mace,” was a warrior god, whose main function was to destroy evil gods and other harmful beings, especially Wrath (aēshma), who according to Avestan cosmogony smashes the sun with his “bloody mace” every day and bathes the sky in blood. The hymn to Sraoša (Yasna 56–57) is therefore recited just before sunrise to invigorate him for the showdown with the powers of darkness. Sraoša was also the first sacrificer and the first to recite the Gāthās in the world of thought (Yasna 57.8), and, according to later tradition, he will preside over the punishment for sins in the hereafter.
- Aši (also Ašiš Wanghwi “good Aši”, Middle Persian Ard, Ahlišwang, Ašišwang) was Sraoša’s female companion and was goddess of “the sending off,” presumably of the rewards. She was Mithra's charioteer and also, apparently, that of Zarathustra in his fight with the Evil Spirit.
- Mithra (Avestan Miθra, Middle Persian Mihr), whose name is distantly related to the English word “mutual”, was the overseer of obligations inherent in deals and contracts between gods and men, and men and men. He is not explicitly named in the Old Avesta. He was invoked by warriors before battle to make him strike fear into the hearts of those who break peace treaties. He would never sleep, had an inordinately large number of eyes and ears, and was able to survey vast areas like a shepherd, as implied by his epithet “having wide pastures”. He dwelt in a house built by Ahura Mazdā and the Life-giving Immortals on the top of Mount Harā, the mountain in the middle of the earth (around which heaven turns), which is unsullied by evil. At dawn, he would go forth from there in front of the sun to clear its path. He was identified with the morning star, Aphrodite (Venus), according to Herodotus.
- Rašnu, “the straightener,” was the god of everything straight, including straight (not crooked) behavior and spinning and weaving. According to the Pahlavi books, he was one of the judges in the beyond. A related deity with unclear function was Rectitude (Arštāt).
- Ardwī Sūrā Anāhitā (Middle Persian Anāhīd) was a female deity identified with the heavenly river, probably the Milky Way. Her hymn was Yašt 5. She was named by her epithets “lofty, rich in life-giving strength, unattached” (or “unsullied”).
- Tištriya (Middle Persian Tištar) was the Iranian name of the star Sirius, who fought drought personified as the demon Apaoša, and the Witch of Bad Seasons, as well as the “witches” who fall from heaven (shooting stars). In his hymn (Yašt 8) his battle with Apaoša to release the waters is described, in which he is aided by the star Satawāesa.
- Verethragna (Middle Persian Warahrān, Wahrām, Bahrām) was the victorious warrior god and one of Mithra's companions; his hymn is Yašt 14. He had ten different shapes, all powerful males: the impetuous wind, a bull, a white horse, a rutting camel, an aggressive male boar, a youth of fifteen, etc.
- Wāyu (Old Indic Vāyu, Middle Persian Wāy) was originally according to Skjærvø, the god of the wind that blows through the space between heaven and earth, and appears in the Avesta as the god of the intermediate space, through which the souls of the dead must travel. Wāyu was therefore associated with inflexible destiny and had both a good and a bad side.
- Haoma (Middle Persian Hōm) was the deity of the sacrificial drink haoma. The hymn in praise of Haoma is recited during the preparations for the pressing of the haoma plant (Indic soma), which occurs at Yasna 27. The identity of the original plant is still disputed, but may have changed throughout the history of the Iranian and Indo-Aryan tribes. Today, haoma is made from the ephedra plant.
- The Fire (Avestan Ātar, Middle Persian Ādur) was the heavenly fire, the sun, son of Ahura Mazdā, but also inherent in the ritual fires.
Sasanian silver vessel depicting Anāhīd.
Avestan
daēwa (Old Persian
daiva), unlike Old Indic
deva (cognate of Latin
deus), no longer referred to good gods. According to the
Gāthās, the
daēwas lost their divine status when they were deceived and made the wrong choice. Thus, the Old Indic
devas Indra,
Sharva, and the twin
Nāsatyas are the same as the Young Avestan
daēwas Indar,
Sāuru, and
Nānghaithya, who tried in vain to kill Zarathustra according to Videvdad 19. The ruler of the world of darkness is the Dark Spirit,
Angra Manyu (Middle Persian
Ahrimen), a name that, like Ahura Mazdā, became fixed in the Young Avesta, when the original meaning of the name had probably been lost and was rendered as the “Evil Spirit”, and later in the Pahlavi Books, as “Foul Spirit”.
I don’t know if I’ve succeeded, but I hope that this gives an idea of what was the general situation of religion in “greater Iran” in early Sasanian times. Rather than a unified religion, what existed was a diverse, variable tradition which to the minds of III century CE Iranians was of untold antiquity and went back to the origins of time, shrouded in the mists of time. It had no written scripture, and its daily practice was dominated by ritual and was completely under control of the priesthood, which was not in itself a unified organization with a clear hierarchy. But this (rather amorphous) religious tradition was so intimately intertwined with Iranian culture that it was impossible to distinguish between “secular” and “religious” within it. The first Iranian dynasty that identified itself openly with Zoroastrian religious principles were the Achaemenids, but after their fall Zoroastrianism survived in the Iranian plateau with little Hellenic influence. That’s remarkable, because Hellenism made a much greater impact in the western part of the Middle East and in “Eastern Iran” (borrowing the term used by Khodadad Rezakhani to refer to the lands in southern and central Asia that are or were inhabited by Iranian peoples to the east of the Iranian plateau and which correspond roughly to the lands between the Indus and Syr Darya rivers). Great Hellenistic cities and kingdoms were established in Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Bactria, Sogdiana, Arachosia or Gandhara, but although Alexander and the Seleucids founded Macedonian and Greek settlements in the Iranian plateau, their cultural influence was very short-lived, and as can be deduced from the extant Zoroastrian literature, its priesthood kept an extremely negative view of Alexander and his successors.
Painted clay sculpture depicting probably a Zoroastrian priest, found in ancient Bactria and dated to the II-I centuries BCE.
When Ardaxšīr I became first king of Pārs, he inaugurated at once an ideological campaign to identify himself and his family with Zoroastrian tradition; his first coins as king of Pārs already show a sacred fire (
atāš) in the reverse. This manipulation of the Zoroastrian tradition to suit dynastic interests began probably with his father Pābag, who according to Tabarī was “custodian” of the prestigious temple of Anāhīd at Staḵr, which strongly implies he was a priest himself (later Byzantine authors also described Ardaxšīr I as a
magus, as Greeks and Romans called Zoroastrian priests). Apart from his coinage, we have also his rock reliefs, in which he is shown being invested as king by Ohrmazd himself, and shockingly he’s depicted in a symmetrical way as the supreme deity, with the same height and garb; only little details like the lifted left hands in front of their mouths identify Ardaxšīr I and his followers as humans showing respect to the gods. Another significant detail is that Ardaxšīr I already described himself as coming “from the seed of the gods”, a practice that already existed in the coinage of the previous kings of Pārs and which was one of the few detectable influences of Hellenistic custom amongst Iranian royalty.
Keeping in mind that Ardaxšīr I was an extremely ambitious, shrewd and probably unscrupulous character, it’s possible that it was under his reign when Sasanian kings began to meddle in religious affairs. The problem is that there’s no contemporary evidence for any kind of reform of the Zoroastrian religion under Ardaxšīr I and his son. It would probably suit their personalities, but the only extant evidence hinting at that is the
Letter of Tansar, which is dated to the VI century CE, under the reign of Khusro I. Scholars seem to agree that the extant document seems to have been based on a genuine III century letter written by Tansar, apparently the Zoroastrian high priest under Ardaxšīr I, to a certain Gušnāsp of Tabaristan, one of the vassal kings under the last Arsacid king Ardawān V. This original missive was apparently written not long after Ardaxšīr I had overthrown Ardawān, and Tansar seems to have been responding to charges raised against Ardaxšīr I, and Gušnāsp’s delay in accepting Ardaxšir I’s suzerainty. Amongst those charges there’s the accusation that Ardaxšīr I "had taken away fires from the fire-temples, extinguished them and blotted them out." To this, Tansar replied that it was the "kings of the peoples (the vassal kings under the Arsacids)” who began the practice of dynastic fires, an "innovation" unauthorized by “the kings of old”.
The content of the
Letter of Tansar would agree quite well with the Sasanian policy (already apparent under Ardaxšīr I) of eroding the autonomy of local kings in order to turn their vassal kingdoms into provinces or substitute them for members of the House of Sāsān. The mention of “dynastic fires” is quite significant because Ardaxšir I himself inaugurated the practice of lighting a regnal fire for each Sasanian king (the regnal years of Sasanian kings were counted from the day their regnal fire was lit; for example the “age twenty of the fire of Šabuhr”), and he clearly wanted to prevent any other kings within the empire to have their own dynastic fires, under the pretext that this was an “innovation” (the ultimate anathema for the ultra-conservative Zoroastrians); in this way he reinforced the sacral status of the House of Sāsān and deprived potential competitors from this powerful ideological tool. And if we are to believe the contents of the
Letter of Tansar, Ardaxšir I did not hesitate at extinguishing by force those sacred fires that did not suit him.
This “Tansar” could be the same person as a certain “Tosar” which is named in the
Dēnkard in relation to the religious policies of Ardaxšīr I:
His Majesty, Ardaxšir, the King of Kings, son of Pābag, acting on the just judgment of Tosar, demanded that all those scattered teachings to be brought to the court. Tosar assumed command; he selected those which were trustworthy, and left the rest out of the canon. And thus he decreed: From now only those are true expositions which are based on the Mazdean religion, for now there is no lack of information and knowledge concerning them.
This passage may suggest that Ardaxšir I, who was from a priestly family, was not well versed in the religion that was to become the official religion of the empire, so that a priest by the name of Tosar/Tansar was chosen as the religious authority. A guess could also be made that Ardaxšir I and his family were knowledgeable about the cult of Anāhīd but not about the Mazdean tradition as a whole. We can find the name of “Tosar” mentioned in the ŠKZ although curiously as the father of a member of the court of Ardaxšir I. This part of the
Dēnkard also gives us another clue which is also corroborated by other sources, which is that Ardaxšir I´s religious views were not accepted by all the Zoroastrians in the empire. First the text states that there was scattered information on the Zoroastrian doctrine which may mean that there were different beliefs or understandings of Zoroastrianism. Consequently, Tosar was employed to systematize the doctrine of Zoroastrianism based on the surviving texts, documents and the oral tradition carried by the “reliable” priests.
Touraj Daryaee draws an interesting parallelism between this development in Iran and the contemporary process amongst Christian communities, where a gradual process of ¨canonization¨ of its sacred texts was also taking place to form the New Testament corpus as we known it today.
It could even be said that the religion that Ardaxšīr I proclaimed to be the official religion of the empire was a deviation from the traditions of Zoroastrianism, hence a heresy. That is, the version of the Zoroastrian religion he proclaimed as “orthodoxy” did not appear to have been accepted by all. This new tradition which the Sasanians “invented” was adopted by the Sasanian state and priests and Zoroastrian believers were made to conform to it. In a sense, we should not speak about “orthodoxy,” because it probably did not exist at all in the Zoroastrian tradition. In the
Letter of Tansar, the king of Tabaristan accuses him of being a heretic and bringing innovations into the tradition. And Ardaxšīr I has to respond through Tosar/Tansar that while this was partly true (in the case I quoted above he refused the charge) innovations had to take place in order to bring unity to the “nation” and the “religion.” The portion of the Zoroastrian clergy who supported Ardaxšīr I had to further support his claim via supernatural means, such as claiming that his arrival was predicted.
The problem of what was “true” Zoroastrianism or orthodoxy would not be solved until after the fall of the empire, although the Sasanians and the priests attached to the dynasty would have liked to be able to portray a picture of religious solidarity. This tension in religious affairs was further aggravated by the meddling of several Sasanian kings in religious affairs, especially Šābuhr I, Yazdgird I and Kawād I.
Still, Ardaxšīr I enjoys a better record in the Pahlavi books than his son, although some reservations among the priesthood against him are still detectable. On one side, Ardaxšīr I is praised for his support of the priesthood, but there’s an unease about some of his measures (the Zoroastrian reluctance to change can be perceived) as well as a certain contempt about his supposedly lowly familiar origins.
But with his son and successor Šābuhr I there’s a clear change (or perhaps rather than change, an evolution) of Ardaxšir I’s religious policies. But still today scholars don’t agree about why Šābuhr I chose to follow this path. To summarize it, his religious policy was a model in schizophrenia: on one side, in his coins, inscriptions and rock reliefs he followed the same lines of his father, called himself “the Mazda-whorshipping Majesty” and boasted about his promotion of the priesthood and the number of sacred fires he had established, but on the other side he protected Mani, welcomed him into his court (according to some western sources, Mani even accompanied him in some campaigns) and allowed him to preach his new religion with complete freedom. Šābuhr I also not only gave complete religious freedom to all religions within the empire, but according to the Babylonian Talmud he was a friend of the renowned Talmudic scholar Samuel of Nehardea.
Tolerating other faiths was not a problem with the
mowbedān, even befriending their leaders (Babylonian Jews had a long story of peaceful coexistence under Achaemenid and Arsacid rule). But protecting a new self-appointed “prophet” who to the eyes of the
mowbedān twisted and polluted the message of the Good Religion, and allowing him to preach undisturbed and even to gain converts among Zoroastrian Iranians was beyond the pale. In the early V century, Yazdgird I “the Sinner” was murdered for much less, and it was probably only Šābuhr I’s charisma and aura of invincibility (in ancient Iranian terms, his
farr) which allowed him to do this without retribution. Still, he probably had to walk a tightrope to achieve this, and his promotion of the clergy and his lavish dotations on sacred fires was probably the price that he had to pay for this; it’s also during the later part of his reign that the priest Kirdēr, Mani’s nemesis, began his rise.
Mani, the founder of Manicheism, was born in 216 CE in Mesopotamia near Ctesiphon, then under Arsacid rule, and was executed by order of the Sasanian
šāhānšāh Bahrām I at Gundešapur in 274 CE. The main source for his biography is the so-called
Cologne Mani Codex (henceforth, CMC), a Greek manuscript found in 1969 in Upper Egypt and kept at the University of Cologne. It’s dated to ca. 400 CE. All the remaining accounts of his life are either hagiographic or legendary (the most detailed of them is the one written by the X century CE Islamic author Ibn al-Nadīm), or are anti-Manichean polemics written by Christian or Islamic authors.
Remains of the Cologne Mani Codex.
Mani was born near Ctesiphon in Mesopotamia; the only secure fact about his origins are that his father was a certain
Pattī, (
Pattikios according to the CMC, according to the
Kitāb al-Fihrist by Ibn al-Nadīm was a native of Ecbatana and thus an Iranian), and a member of the Judeo-Christian sect of the Elchasaites (a splinter group of the larger Gnostic Ebionites). Some sources also claim that Mani’s mother was of noble Parthian lineage, but the fact is that in none of the surviving Manichean texts did Mani boast of noble ancestry (or even of Iranian ancestry). First at age 12 and later at age 24, Mani had visionary experiences that led him to abandon the Elchasaite community and begin preaching his own religious message. In 240-41 CE, Mani travelled to the Kušan lands (which could mean anywhere in Afghanistan, Pakistan or northwestern India) and there he became familiar with the teachings of Buddhism and Hinduism. In 242 CE, he returned to Mesopotamia and managed to be accepted into the court of Šābuhr I; he enjoyed the favor of this king and also that of his successor Hormizd I, but the following Sasanian king Bahrām I ordered his execution (or “martyrdom” as it is described in Manichean texts); according to al-Biruni he met a gruesome death and his skin and head were displayed over the main gate of Gundešapur as a warning to his followers, many of whom were persecuted by Bahrām I and his son and successor Bahrām II. In the KKZ, the priest Kirdēr publicly boasts of having been the main responsible for Mani’s conviction and for the bloody persecution of his followers; given the very public way in which he displayed this “achievement”, scholars think there’s little reason to doubt about its truth.
Mani was a great traveller and a prolific writer; according to the sources he wrote (and illustrated also, the sources also claim that he was an accomplished painter and graphical artist) five main books explaining his doctrine; four of them are written in Aramaic and one in Middle Persian. None of them have survived complete, only of some of them have some fragments arrived to our time:
- The Fundamental Epistle, originally written in Aramaic, quoted at length (in Latin) by Augustine of Hippo (who had been a Manichaean before converting to Christianity).
- The Living Gospel, also in Aramaic of which some fragments survive in the Cologne Mani Codex, in some manuscripts from Turfan in Xinjiang and in some Coptic fragments from Fayyum.
- The Aržang (a Parthian word meaning "worthy") which, written and illustrated by Mani also in Aramaic. It was unique in that it contained numerous pictures designed to portray the events in the Manichaean description of the creation and history of the world. This book has been lost in its entirety, but due to the beauty of its illustrations some copies survived for a long time; one is attested in the library of the Sultan of Ghazni in 1092 CE.
- The Dō bun ī Šābuhragān (The two principles, [dedicated] to [King] Šābuhr” was written by Mani in Middle Persian and dedicated to Šābuhr I as an explanation of the principles of the Manichean faith to the king with the intention of convincing him to convert, but Šābuhr I never took the step. Fragments in the original Middle Persian have been discovered at Turfan, and some quotes from it have also survived in al-Biruni’s work.
Manicheism is a dualistic faith, but that’s where the similarities between it and Zoroastrianism begin and end. The Manichean faith is a perfect example of a syncretic religion, in which elements from Gnostic Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism were combined.
The main source to reconstruct Mani’s life without hagiographic or legendary additions is the CMC, and the same happens (to a lesser degree) with his teachings. He was brought up by his father in an enclosed sectarian environment of Elchasaites, a Judeo-Christian Gnostic sect whose teachings are today mostly unknown to scholars; whatever is known about them has arrived to us through the denunciations of Christian authors like Hippolytus of Rome, Eusebius of Caesarea or Epiphanius of Salamis. At age 12, Mani had some kind of mystical or visionary experience which was received unfavorably by the leadership of the Elchasaite community; when this experience repeated itself at age 24, Mani either was expelled from or voluntarily left the community in order to preach the message that had been revealed to him in those visions. According to the CMC, these experiences consisted in Mani being visited by his Twin Spirit, who revealed “the truth” to him. This doctrine included not only the teachings of the legendary prophet Elchasai (the alleged founder of his native sect), but also borrowings from Pauline Christian theology, Gnosticism at large, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism, which imply quite a detailed knowledge by Mani of these religious traditions; how Mani came into such an extensive and detailed knowledge of his contemporary religions is one of the main mysteries of Mani’s life (of course, according to the CMC, his Twin Spirit just revealed everything to him).
Mani left the Elchasaite community accompanied by two disciples (he was also shortly after joined by his father) and went to nearby Ctesiphon to start his preaching; according to the chronologies given by the CMC and other ancient sources, this happen almost at the same time (18-19 April 240 CE) as Šābuhr I was crowned as
šāhānšāh (12 April 240 CE). When Mani began his preaching, he had obviously thought out a completely developed, complicated theological and cosmological doctrine, the rules of a system of distinct morals for the perfect (the priests of Manicheism) and the lay people respectively, clear ideas about the organization of his followers in a hierarchically structured church, and a concept of how to evangelize mankind in an effective way. These teachings remained stable under the disappearance of Manicheism as a living religion; to the scholar W. Henning (writing in 1936) that’s quite a remarkable achievement, as:
(Mani was) always lavish with details. Unfortunately he frequently failed to notice that the details he produced on the spur of the moment did not square with his teachings of the day before. His picture of the world is a case in point. Minute circumstances are absurdly elaborated, but the whole is utter confusion. One saving quality is Mani’s consciousness of his shortcomings: to make his cosmological views clear he published a volume of drawings and paintings (...)
Scholar Werner Sundermann puts its more succinctly in his 2009 article about Mani in
Encyclopaedia Iranica:
Much more than a logically trained, systematic thinker, Mani was a fanciful artist hounded by ever-new ideas and inspirations.
Mani’s new doctrine also claimed to be a kind of perfected form of almost all existing religions. That was so because Mani regarded his religion as the real, unadulterated essence of what, for their time and for their land, Zarathustra, the Buddha, Christ, and also the prophets of the Old Testament before Abraham had once preached, and what had later been misunderstood or misrepresented by their disciples. This way, Manichean missionary propaganda could outwardly adapt itself to the terms and concepts of other religions to the point of sheer mimicry. Mani himself was the first to introduce this practice. He gave his theology and cosmology a seemingly Zoroastrian appearance, so much so that even modern scholars were misled into assuming it to be an “heresy” of Zoroastrianism. While at the same time, Christian authors considered it a Christian heresy, the Abbasid caliphs considered it an Islamic heresy, and the Tang emperor Xuanzong forbid any Chinese to convert into the Manichean faith because it “confused” the people under the false garb of Buddhism.
In Mani’s own missionary journeys and the all the following Manichean missions, the most successful method of propagating the Manichean gospel was to approach the rulers of a given territory first, to win their support and their permission to teach their subjects or even to convert them. Examples known from Mani’s life are (all come from Manichean literature, so their veracity is suspect): the spectacular conversion of the “Tūrān-šāh” as the highlight of Mani’s journey to India between 240 and 242 CE, the (probably legendary) conversion of the brother of Šābuhr I, the
Mēšān-šāh; the winning over of Pērōz, another brother of Šābuhr I, who allegedly introduced Mani to his brother, and the conversion of an anonymous king and his princes “far from Ctesiphon”. There’s also repeated mention of a certain
Havzā, king of
Waruzān (either Georgia or a Central Asian principality near Balkh).
The most important success was gained, however, when Mani presented himself at the court of King Šābuhr I. This happened possibly, according to a heavily damaged passage of the CMC restored and interpreted by its editors, in 241/242 CE, shortly after the death of King Ardaxšīr I. It was perhaps on this occasion that Mani submitted to the king his book
Dō bun ī Šābuhragān in which he gave a description in the Middle Persian language of his cosmogony and eschatology, his prophetic message, and personal career. A trustworthy surviving Parthian hagiographic fragment makes it clear that Mani did not succeed in converting the king. But he did win his favor to such a degree that he was authorized to propagate the new faith in the Iranian empire. Another favor that Mani could and did not refuse followed Mani’s successful self-presentation: for some years he was taken into the kings retinue (
komitaton in Greek), which means that he had to perform court service (according to the Coptic
Kephalaia found in Egypt), probably in the capacity of a doctor, because of his alleged knowledge in matters of medicine (he’s called in ancient sources the “doctor from Babel”) and astrology.
As a member of the Sasanian court, Mani had to reduce his commitment to the Manichean community, which raised complaints amongst his disciples. Finally, Šābuhr I gave him leave from the court, and he resumed his full-time commitment to the community. According to the Manichean sources, Mani was provided with letters of safe passage by the king himself, his brother Pērōz and the chief secretary Ohrmizd. According to the
Kephalaia, during this period of his life Mani travelled constantly:
(I spent) many years in Persia, in the country of the Parthians, up to Adiabene, and the borders of the provinces of the kingdom of the Romans.
Why did Šābuhr I protect Mani? Some scholars have for a long time speculated with the theory that maybe Šābuhr I wanted to make Manicheism the unifying religion of his empire, able to attract Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians and Buddhists alike, but scholar Werner Sundermann considers this unlikely. First, Šābuhr I never converted, and second he thinks that there are signs that perhaps during his last years Šābuhr I began the persecution of Manicheism; that would also align itself quite nicely with the rise of Kerdīr during the last decade of his reign and with the firm adherence to the Mazdean religion that he made in the ŠKZ, which is also dated to the last decade of his reign. Sundermann provides as an evidence for his thesis an assertion of the Manichean 226th Coptic Psalm:
From the day of the great persecution to the day of the cross (Mani’s execution) there are six years.
That must have happened in Šābuhr I’s last years, in 268 CE if Mani died in 274 CE or in 271 CE if 277 CE was the year of his death. However that may be, after Šābuhr I’s death in 272 CE Mani did win the favor of his son and successor king Hormazd I. That is unanimously attested in the Manichean literature. This gave Mani and his church a last period of peaceful development; a short one, because Hormazd I died in 273 CE.
Manichean doctrine is extremely complex and convoluted, but Mani (whatever his capacities as an orderly and rigorous thinker may have been) came up with ingenious means to broadcast it. On one side, his fame as a painter survived well into the Islamic era (he is even named in the
Šāh-nāmah as “Mani the Painter”); the example and repute of their founder encouraged subsequent Manichean preachers and clerics to exceed as calligraphers and illuminators of manuscripts (although evidently for Mani artistic achievement was not an end in itself, but merely a means to propagate the
gnosis). He also came up with another innovation: he began using the Aramaic Palmyrene script to write Iranian languages (Parthian and Middle Persian, for which he used the court dialect): with the addition of some additional characters for phonetic sounds that did not exist in Aramaic, this resulted in a much most straightforward script system than the awkward Pahlavi script; this Manichean script saw great success and expanded to the eastern limits of the Iranian linguistic area (Bactria and Sogdiana) and even beyond, for it was eventually used to write Old Turkic and Uyghur.
Fragment from an illuminated Manichean manuscript from Turfan in Xinkiang, depicting probabaly a meal of Elects.
Another innovation of great consequence for the Manichean church, one that proved its deep insight into a foreign religion, was the identification of the deities and demons of the Manichean doctrine with matching Zoroastrian counterparts. This outward “iranization” of Mani’s theology and demonology became the methodological pattern of the not completely identical Parthian and Sogdian systems and must have facilitated access to the complicated Manichean system into the Iranian plateau and Central Asia. One can only imagine the reaction of the
mowbedān and
hērbedān when they realized this.
Manicheism is the only world religion that has gone completely extinct (its last real believers date from China in the XVI century). Manicheism itself claimed the universal validity of its truth. Mani regarded his doctrine not as the religion of a region, a state, or a chosen people, but as the completion of the preceding great religions of Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism. It incorporated traditions of those and many other religions and doctrines. A comprehensive but partially destroyed Coptic version of Mani’s speech on the ten superiorities of his religion is given in the
Kephalaia. The French scholar Henri-Charles Puech described it in 1949 as a “
religion de charactère essentiellement missionnaire” and more so than any other religion, Islam included, “
une religion du livre”, a “religion of the Book”.
Manicheism promised the redemption of the human soul from the bonds of its corporeal existence in the transcendent World of Light through wisdom (Greek
gnosis), and so it aspired to convince the human mind instead of demanding unquestioning acceptance. Manicheism demandes that from Gnosis good deeds should follow which would contribute to the redemption, not only of one’s own soul, but also of the “World Soul”. It implied a strictly ascetic lifestyle of the elect (the Manichean priests) and the support for the elect by the auditors through almsgiving and a general confession and atonement of sins.
The heart and core of the Manichean doctrine is its extremely original, convoluted (not to say confusing) and complex cosmogony. The cosmogony starts with a description of the primeval existence of the two worlds of divine Light and demonic Darkness limiting each other directly without any void space in between (according to Ibn al-Nadīm). The superiority of the World of Light lies in its blissful, self-sufficient harmony; its weakness is its peaceful nature, which makes it unprepared for any conflict. The World of Darkness is related, in contrast, to anarchic, chaotic strife and sexuality, and destructive concupiscence in every respect (Manicheism had an extremely negative attitude towards the material world, and towards sexuality as sex was the way in which the material flesh perpetuated itself). The activities of the World of Darkness are neutralized so long as they are ignorantly directed against themselves. But the time comes when they discover by chance the existence of the World of Light, which now becomes their object of desire. Their whole aggressive force is turned against the completely unprotected World of Light. The attack of the demonic hosts is averted only by the self-sacrifice of the highest god, the Father of Greatness, in the person of his son, the First Man.
The First Man advances towards the enemy, suffers defeat, looses consciousness, and his five sons, the Light Elements, are swallowed up by the greedy demons. But this apparent triumph of the demons turns out to be a hollow victory. It was in the end rather, the First Man’s victory through self-sacrifice. The devoured Light Elements have a poisonous effect on the demons. They paralyze their aggressive force and give the World of Light time to develop militant protective counter-measures against the demonic attack.
Therefore, under the constraint of the demonic menace, the World of Light changes its character, and becomes a mighty warlike power. The warlike aspect of the World of Light is represented by its Second Evocation, the third deity of which, the Spirit of Life, liberates the First Man, but cannot immediately liberate his sons. He builds instead this world from the corpses of slain demons to serve as a prison for the still living demons and as a grandiose mechanism for the liberation of the swallowed and dismembered particles of the Light Elements which from now on, and as the subject of permanent liberation, appear as the suffering World Soul (also called the Living Soul or the Living Self).
It is a result of the encounter of the call of the Spirit of Life and the answer (or the hearing) of the First Man that a new deity comes into being, the Enthymesis of Life, the desire of the imprisoned divine entities to be redeemed (and of the redeeming gods to regain their lost relatives). The Enthymesis of Life is the counterpart of the Enthymesis of Death, the eternal, powerful principle of greed that inspires the whole demonic world as
ataktos kinēsis “disorderly motion” according to Alexander of Lykopolis (author of an influential work against Manicheism).
The creation of the world marks the beginning of cosmogony in its proper sense. Although the world is made of demonic substance and is, as such, of an evil nature (plants and animals in particular), it is the work of a divine demiurge and it fulfills the functions of making the liberation of the World Soul possible and of keeping the still active demons imprisoned. The redemption of the World Soul is the main object of cosmic history (human world history included). The result of the cosmic history, however, is predetermined by the pre-cosmic events, the sacrifice of the First Man and the defeat of the demons at the hands of the Spirit of Life and the Mother of Life, even if the demons are not yet made powerless and even if the final divine victory will not be a perfect one.
The creation of the world; the Macrocosm provokes the demonic counter-creation of the first human couple and their descendents: the Microcosm. The Enthymesis of Death herself, in the form of the demonic couple of
Ašaqlūn and
Nebrō’ēl, procreates Adam and Eve as the best possible prisons of the Light substance of the World Soul. Therefore, according to Mani’s doctrine it is humankind that is a demonic creation, rather than the world as such.
Another manuscript fragment found in Turfan, written in Manichean script.
The cosmic work of the successive, step by step, liberation of the World Soul is the task of the deities of the Third Evocation who act under the guidance of the Third Messenger, mainly in the macrocosmic sphere, and under
Jesus the Splendor who is mostly concerned with the liberation of the human souls. In fact, Jesus and his emanation, the Light-
Nous, find the means to enlighten men through divine Gnosis, to deprive their demonic ruler, the Spirituality of the Body, of power and to imprison it in the corporeal limbs. This Spirituality, or in Mani’s Pauline terminology, the Old Man, is then replaced by the New Man as the personality of the enlightened and righteously acting religious person. This is described in great detail in the
Sermon on the Light-Nous. But not only were Jesus and his helpers successful in rescuing the souls of many men, they even managed to transform some persons (the elect) soul and body, to instruments of the material liberation of the light substance in plants through their digestive system (
I’m not making this up, I swear). Thus, thanks to the superior aptitude of the divine beings, man, the most sophisticated creature of the demonic world, can be made the most effective instrument of the redemption of the World Soul.
Jesus the Splendor himself proclaims the divine truth to Adam, converts him and makes him the first human prophet. A chain of prophets, inspired by the Light-
Nous, follows one by one and at different places, renewing the divine message that is exactly the same as what Mani later espoused. Their number and their sequence change in our sources, but the most prominent ones between Adam and Mani are Zoroaster, the Buddha, and Jesus of Nazareth. Unfortunately, none of the forerunners of Mani took sufficient care to have his message preserved in written form and in authorized texts, so that their disciples misunderstood their masters in many ways and their detractors produced their own falsifications in the name of the same masters. Therefore Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and Christianity, let alone Judaism, can no longer claim to teach the eternal verities (note the similarity of this claim with the one in the Quran accusing Jews and Christians of having corrupted the Scriptures). And it is only Mani, the prophet at the end of time, who avoided the faults of his forerunners, and his message, composed in five or seven canonical books and the traditions of reliable disciples, are, and remain, the ultimate truth.
The acceptance of the Manichean doctrine was the first step to salvation. But it necessarily entailed a submission to the rules of Manichean ethics. Their
raison d’être followed from the events of the cosmogony. For example, the commandment “that we eat no flesh” followed from the assumption that animals were the abortions of celestial she-demons and therefore rich in greed-arousing substance (likewise it was forbidden the consumption of alcoholic drinks). Likewise, the commandment “that we do not kill” implied that any living being, but also the earth, the water and the stars in the skies contain particles of the vulnerable World Soul, so that to kill an animal, to cut a plant, to walk on the earth, to take a bath, etc. was a violation of the Living Soul.
It is obvious that morals like these are impracticable. This dilemma was solved to a certain degree by the introduction of a double set of ethical demands: strict commandments (or rather prohibitions) for a small elite of “perfect” or “elect” people and ten less demanding commandments for the greater community of the devout lay-people. The elect were submitted to five rigorous commandments which confined their lives to the duties of hearing and reading the instructive sermons and scriptures, singing hymns, offering prayers, attending the services and above all the sacramental communal meals, teaching and preaching the gospel of truth to brethren and lay-people, doing missionary work, etc. They were submitted to a strict vegetarian regime and forbidden to drink alcoholic drinks and eat meat, to earn their own livelihood (except for acts of financial business), or practice any sexual activities.
But living a holy life affected more than the elect’s personal salvation. It made his body, and his digestive system in particular, a miraculous instrument for liberating the light particles of the World Soul that were imprisoned in melons, cucumbers, grapes, water, fruit juice, etc. By eating those fruits the elect set free the light particles from the material
massa damnata and let them ascend to the New Paradise of Light in their hymns of praise, their prayers (and, as Augustine of Hippo derisively wrote, their belches [ructatibus]). This happened in their sacramental meals, regularly held whenever fasting was not incumbent. If we call the communal meal of the elect a kind of Eucharist, it is just the opposite of the Christian ceremony. It does not mediate God’s redemption of the believers through Christ’s sacrifice, it affects the redemption of the suffering divine World Soul through the redeeming force of holy men. In this way the elect gain a super-human rank, and it is doubtlessly in this function that they were addressed as “gods”.
The lay-people were exempt from the rigorous obligations and restrictions of the elect. For them a catalogue of ten moderate commandments (according to Ibn al-Nadīm) was valid. Their main obligation, however, reflected in the commandment not to be miserly and to follow frequently sermons and parables, was to give alms, but only to the elect people (according to Augustine of Hippo). To give alms meant feeding, clothing, and housing the elect, ordaining one of their children for the service of the elect, and if those hearers belonged to the ruling or upper class “helpers” to give them protection.
I don’t know if this makes much sense, but my goal was to offer an overall view of Zoroastrianism and Manicheism, so as to make evident how deeply different, even opposed, both religions are. For starters, Zoroastrianism has absolutely nothing of the loathing of Manicheism towards the material world; on the contrary Ahura Mazdā needs the active help of men, in words, thoughts and deeds, to obtain his final triumph over Angra Mainyu, and so Zoroastrianism rejects any kind of monasticism or asceticism. Dualism in Zoroastrianism works only at the level of the “world of Thought” while Manichean dualism considers most of the material world an evil creation. The cosmogonies of both religions are completely different, and so are their ethics (Zoroastrianism includes warrior deities) and their forms of worship; the core importance of rituals in Zoroastrianism has no equivalents in Manicheism.
