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A Sogdian Fragment of the Manichaean Cosmogony

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

W. B. Henning
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Extract

As a good missionary and teacher Mani knew the value of repetition. With endless pains he had elaborated a story of the world, which was to explain all phenomena, of nature and the mind, that came within reach of his knowledge. Its comprehensiveness made it so complicated that it required—and still requiresa strong effort to remember all its details. t All the greater was the need to force it, by ceaseless repetition, into the minds of those who were ready to listen to the new prophet. No doubt every one of his books and longer epistles opened with this story, which may have been the sole subject of several of them. It is therefore useless to try to identify the various accounts before us either with each other or with one of the books of which we know merely the title.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , June 1948 , pp. 306 - 318
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1948

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References

1 Traité Mānichéen, 56 [552]s, 3; Hymn-scroll, 1226, 336c. They were incorrectly explained by Chavannes-Pelliot, loc. cit., n. 1, and WaldschmidtLentz, Manich. Dogm., 495.

1 With this section the reader should compare the poetic treatment of the subject by Mār Ammō, in the first canto of Huuīdagmfin (= Hymnscroll, 261338, see HSOAS., XI, 199208, 21619).

2 Cf. Hymn-scroll, 271.

3 Cf. Hymn-scroll, 296.

4 Cf. Hymn-scroll, 304.

5 Cf. Hymn-scroll, 281c-d.

1 With Chr. Sogd. myn'br, cf. Oss. mīnävar, miniwäg.

1 So at least in a MS. in my possession of the Majma'u H-Furs (first edition).

2 I take this opportunity to tender my apologies to M. Benveniste for giving (in BSOAS., XI, 723, note on 911) a wrong date (1939) to his article “ Notes Sogdiennes (IV) ”, BSOS., IX, part 3, which in fact was published in the summer of 1938. I regret this error all the more as the later date was favourable to my argument, which I withdraw unreservedly.

3 Polotsky, Manichäische Homilien, 18; cf. BSOAS., XI, 71, n. 4

4 Taishó Tripitaka, vol. 54, No. 2141a

5 It also contained pictures of the final judgment. In Kephalaia, 234 sq., an Auditor complains that his ultimate fate was not depicted in the volume

1 The (180) “ gates of the sun ” are mentioned in Kephalaia, 87, 213; cf. also BSOAS., XI, 65, n. 2.

1 Or rather, to conform to Manichsean parlance, “ arrange ” or “ fashion ”. The Manichapana, strictly speaking, used the word create only of the process by which a divinity produces another divine being, of lower rank, by emanating it out of its own substance.

2 The forty angels mentioned at the end of the preceding paragraph.

1 The passage is badly worded. Probably it means that the thickness of each Firmament is 10,000 parasangs, and the thickness of each layer of air between any two Firmaments is another 10.000 parasangs, so that the distance from the bottom of the lowest to the top of the highest of the Firmaments would be 190,000 parasangs.

2 A whole line may have been omitted by the scribe , (etc. ?).

3 That the demiurge took steps to prevent further procreation of the Powers of Darkness is commonly stated. Manj here made use of the astrologers' assertion that the planets and constellations are either male or female, of. Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, book i, chs. 6 and 12

4 = Spiriliis vivens, see below, note on line 106.

5 = Spiriius vivens and Mother of Life.

6 See Psalm-book, 2, 10; Kephalaia, 80, 6; 83, 2; 87, 34, etc. The seventh Firmament is the seventh counting from below, cf. Keph., 170, 23 sqq., where the Bex honoris Sogd. Smān- is said to be the ruler of merely the lower seven firmaments, the upper three being within the realm of the Splenditenens. Occasionally his throne is located in the third firmament (as in Keph., 92, 25), evidently the third counting from the top. Mani here made a little mistake, by confusing cardinal and ordinal numbers (107 = 3, but the seventh from below is the fourth from above). As this mistake is of a kind of which modern scholars dealing with problems of chronology are not rarely found guilty, we must not be too hard on Mani; however, we can say that Cosmas Indicopleustes displayed little judgment when he talked of him as of a cf. Beausobre, Hist, de Manichée

7 Cf. Kephalaia, 167, 1415

8 On these roots, veins, links, tethers, lihme, see JBAS., 1942, 232, n. 6; BSOAS., XI, 71. In the Kephalaia the chief passages are 88; 118,3; 119,8–20; 120 sqq.; 125; 213–16. The new material serves to elucidate the previously misunderstood references to /radices in the Ada Archelai, 14 sq

9 That is, the North Pole. The roots, etc., of the zodiac are passed through this “ hole ” and attached to the Superior Wheel, which lies before the Sex honoris in the seventh firmament, see below, note on line 78

10 Cf. M 98 R 3–6, “ and they (= Spir. viv. and Mother of Life) suspended it (= zodiac) from the lowest firmament and, to make it turn ceaselessly at call, they set over it two angels.a male and a female.” With these words concludes the description of the creation of the firmaments in that fragment; they agree closely with the last words of our fragment. We can thus confidently say that the description of the firmaments is complete in our text, except for two or three words.

1 Despite the unpleasant fact that their number is said to be five in Keph., 170, 2. Perhaps “ five garments ” there is ellipsis of “ five spreads of the three garments ”. Different are the five “ great garments ” of Keph., 177, 23, which came into existence only after the third creation

1 Thus to be read as plural (with Pognon).

2 Regrettably this meaning is anything but assured. The Burhān has it from Surūrī, who declines responsibility for it and attributes it to the Nushe-i Mirzā Ibrāhīm, a book (No. 56 in Blochmann's list) used also by the author of the Farhang-i Jahangīrī, who, however, refrains from giving this moaning, perhaps wisely. Ordinarily farasp/farasb is a “ roof-beam ”, see e.g. Ibn Isfandiydr's Hist, of Tabaristdn, tr. E. G. Browne, p. 39, n. 1 = ed. Tehran, i, 87, 7 [the unknown there is a local word for “ rafter ”, cf. Velatru palvar, Lambton, Three Persian, Dialects, 90; in the Muqaddimatu 'l-Adab, 25, 5, = Ar. ārid could be [ Asadi ed. Iqbal; Shahname (once); F. (three times); etc. “ Roof-beam ” is also the meaning of FM.frasp in AV., ii, 11, 12.

1 In the same passage in different recensions and MSS.; there is thus no need to consider other words such as Pers. mušang “ green pea ” (Kabuli mušunk).