Bulletin of Catholic University of Peking

CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF PEKING 65

Manichzism was founded in Persia; in its eastward progress it first spread to Tokhara and thence to China. Scarcely forty years had elapsed, however, after its introduction into China, when it was proscribed by the Emperor. In the Notes to Book 40 of the T’ung Tien, we read the following passage:

“This was the Imperial Decree promulgated in the 7th Moon of the 20th year of Kai Yuan (732 a.D.):

“Ma-Mani is a heretical doctrine. Under pretense of being Buddhism, it deceives and misleads the people. Hence it is meet that it should be severely proscribed. But as it is the religion of the Western Barbarians, these shall still be permitted to practise this religion with

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impunity’. In the above edict, we encounter for the first time the name of Ma-Mani. In older records and works, we meet with no distinctive terms other than those of Butotan and Musha. This is the first instance of the name. of the founder being used to designate the religion. Thereafter the name Mani appears frequently, v.g., in such works as the Seng Shih Lioh (‘Biography of Buddhist Monks’) and the Fo Tsu Tung Chi (‘Genealogy of Buddhist Patriarchs”). The twentieth year of K’ai Yuan is separated from the first

. years.

year.of Yen Tsai by an interval of only thirty-eight years. The rapidity of Manichzean progress in China may be readily guaged from the fact that, within such a short space of time, it had become so important as to provoke proscription by an imperial mandate. The charge brought against the Manichzans that they propagated their system ‘‘under pretense of its being Buddhism,’ was due to the fact that the Manichzans had made liberal use of Buddhistic terminology in the translation of their Scriptures. The further indictment that their religion ‘‘ deceived and misled the people,’ is positive proof that there must have been a considerable number of Chinese converts to the Manichean creed. And, finally, the characteristically Chinese policy of “allowing Foreigners to practise a Foreign religion while forbidding the Chinese to adopt it,” is a restriction that has, at one time or another, been imposed upon every religion of Foreign origin for the past two thousand Hence in the case of Manichzeism the Chinese emperor was simply carrying out the traditional policy of his ancestors.

(“An Inquiry concerning the Penetration of Manicheism into China,’ Chapter IT.)

MANICHAISM IN CHINA DURING THE YUAN anp MING DYNASTIES (1280—1628 A.D.)

The flourishing state of Manicheism in the province of Fu-kien during the Southern Sung dynasty (1127-1278 A.D.) can be inferred from a passage quoted from the Yi Chien Chih in chapter 12 of the Fo Tsu T’ung Chi as well as from chapter 14 of Lu Yu's T’iao Tui Chuang. Up to the present my

efforts to secure a copy of the Yi Chien Chi have been in vain, but in my researches with reference to works dealing with the province of Fu-kien, I came across a copy of the Min-shu written by Ho Ch’iao Yuan. The Min-shu was compiled towards the end of the reign of the emperor Wan-li