Byzantium to China, a Festschrift comprising thirty-two choice essays by established scholars specializing in the textual, culturo-historical, and religious traditions of the premodern Eurasian world, stands as a fitting tribute to Professor Samuel N.C. Lieu in honor of his contributions to Roman, Manichaean, and Silk Road studies. In their subject matters, the chapters range from treatments of the interplay of religious ideas, texts, and communities – notably ones associated with the followers of Mani (c. 216–274/276) – to ones that bear on the political, cultural, and socio-economic developments in the Roman East, the Sassanian Empire, Central Asia, Mongolia, China, and other contiguous regions over a time span of more than a millennium.
Byzantium to China's Foreword orients readers to the volume's content by situating them in the context of the academic output and research interests of its honoree. The two editors thoughtfully appraise Lieu's significant publications and call especial attention to the latter's scholarly collaborations that have, among other things, greatly helped to institutionalize Manichaean studies as a dynamic and many-vectored international academic field. Their narrative is supplemented by a chronologically organized list of Lieu's publications.
The relevance and importance of the Sassanian matrix in which Mani lived and taught is examined in detail by Iris Colditz who searches the Sassanian Law Book and still later compilations of legal texts, particularly works that speak to disputes over property, for how Zoroastrians perceived non-Zoroastrians within the normative ideological framework of civil law. Iain Gardner builds on Ludwig Koenen's earlier argument that the Cologne Mani Codex, the purported (auto)biography of Mani, was first composed in Syriac and only later translated into Greek, to press the question of whether the ideas of Mani and his followers should be situated within an Iranian religious matrix (as was previously done) rather than within a Judaeo-Christian one.
Several chapters examine religious traditions that either coincided with time and space in the presence and activity of the followers of Mani or that indeed dialectically shaped them. Paul McKechnie finds evidence in the Cologne Mani-Codex for how a Hellenistic cultural framework left its mark on the thought of Mani. Meanwhile, Judith M. Lieu compares the ideas of Mani with those of Marcion of Sinope, notable for his dualistic thinking, to determine whether and to what extent the Hellenistic philosophical tradition shaped Mani's own thinking. Zsuzsanna Gulácsi continues to enrich our understanding of the importance of visual culture to the presentation, reception, and spatial propagation of Mani's ideas by examining Mani's “Book of Pictures” from the third and fourth centuries, finding most evidence for its use in Mesopotamia, Iran and points further east. Johannes van Oort closely examines a particular case of this religious visual culture by posing the question of what, if anything, Augustine “saw” in the course of his decade-long experience as a Manichaean hearer in Roman Carthage and concludes by tentatively suggesting that the latter might have been presented with a variant of Mani's “Book of Pictures” with which Manichaean teachers sought to persuade, establish their authority, and build community.
Information derived from papyrological finds in Egypt forms the backbone of another set of chapters. Malcolm Choat engages with the provenance and scope of the Nag Hammadi Codices to appraise pre- and early Christian dualism with an eye to incipient forms of Manichaean and Christian asceticism in Egypt. Alanna Nobbs reviews recent historiography on how extant sources such as papyri have been mined for information about the process and pace of Christianization in early Byzantine Egypt and the need for nuance in one's approach: in the case of female onomastics as a form of proxy evidence, Christianization is likely reflected more in a preference for naming women after abstract principles such as Sophia and Eirene than naming them after biblical characters.
The patterns of longer-distance Eurasian socio-economic, political, and cultural exchanges that one commonly refers to as the Silk Road or silk routes represent a key backdrop for the varieties of encounter stories explored in Byzantium to China. The conquests of Alexander the Great and the ensuing Hellenistic and, later, Roman domination of the eastern Mediterranean and Near East shaped these interactions to a significant degree. Kenneth A. Sheedy shows how Alexander and his satraps helped create an image of the Macedonian king as a legitimate successor to the Achaemenids by minting coins that served as vehicles of cultural propaganda and legitimation. Peter M. Edwell discusses how the imperial policies of the Roman state from Augustus to the early third century dialectically shaped the Romans’ eastern trade. Political and cultural rivalry between Rome and Iran became an especially notable element that shaped the history of western Eurasia and, indeed, of the silk roads. Fergus Millar offers a helpful conspectus of the key sources in Syriac that speak to the cultural and religious conflicts between and within the Roman and Sassanian empires while Geoffrey Greatrex chastises Anthony Kaldellis (2004) for over-interpreting of Procopius of Caesarea's negative representations of Persian monarchs and suggests that the sixth-century historian was likely merely emulating earlier Greek historical writers such as Herodotus rather than making a fresh major point with this portrayal.
A number of studies examines the manner in which the followers of Mani spread Manichaean texts and ideas across Eurasia. Majella Franzmann argues that Manichaean missionaries were, on account of their religious ideology and experience, “strangers twice over” as they toiled in a world suffused by the elements from the Dark Realm while experiencing opposition and being persecuted by local authorities. Other contributions speak to the importance of Mani and his teachings as seen against the context of wider religious developments and transformations along the Silk Road. Jason BeDuhn proposes that Manichaeans not only syncretistically adapted elements of Buddhism but that the Buddhist tradition in South Asia (as well as in Central and East Asia), specifically the figure of the Nārāyaṇa Buddha, were also shaped through the adaptation of the ideas of religious prophecy that followers of Mani championed. Nils Arne Pedersen explains how the traditions of the First Man and the Third Messenger are intertwined in the Manichaean tradition. Christiane Reck offers a formal stylistic analysis of a set of mostly Middle-Iranian Manichaean writings, the so-called Contour Letters from Turfan in Central Asia, in terms of their decorative outline script so as to illuminate developments in Manichaean scribal practices.
Sogdians and Uighur Turks were some of the peoples in central Eurasia whose histories were closely intertwined with Manichaean and other “Silk Road” religious traditions. The teachings of Mani became an important part of the Sogdian diasporic community that stretched from its Central Asian home to the other parts of Eurasia through the steppe and silk routes. Nicholas Sims-Williams offers an incisive discussion of the rediscovery of Sogdian writings and its repercussions across fields such as philology, historical linguistics, and religious studies. Max Deeg examines the famous Tang Chinese Buddhist figure Xuanzang (玄奘) (602–664) and how he employed the Chinese term Bosi (波斯), which is usually translated into English as “Persia,” to refer to Sogdian Christian groups in Central Asia rather than to Iran after the usage of the Sogdians in China, thereby underscoring the agency of Sogdian communities as cultural and religious intermediaries within Eurasia. Enrico Morano discussed how Sogdian Manichaeans interpreted fruits and trees as important religious symbols. Yutaka Yoshida focuses on a key text from the Turfan oasis that speak to activities of Sogdian Christians in China and Central Asia while Erica Hunter parses a didactic dialogue text featuring Christian or Jewish interlocutors that Manichaeans deployed as an internal training manual. Peter Zieme analyzes a Manichaean Benediction Hymn from the Uighur Turkic community. Craig Benjamin explains how the Orkhon Valley in Mongolia served as the birthplace of successive steppe-empires and eventually acquired the status of a sacred space by the time of the rise of the Mongols under Temüjin (d. 1227).
East Asia is the focal point of chapters that assess the impact of the coming of eastern Christianities and Manichaeism to China. Glen L. Thompson finds convincing previous scholarly claims for an early (first-century) date for the arrival of Christians in China after reviewing the relevant visual sources, their rendition as drawings and subsequent interpretations. The religion of Mani became entrenched in the Tang Empire at least until the Revolt of An Lushan (755–763) prompted a backlash of xenophobia against foreigners in China. David Wilmshurst suggests that a poem of the renowned Tang poet Li Bo (李白) (701–762) was inspired by Sogdian Christians who were in the emperor's service. Wang Yuanyuan and Lin Wushu revisits the figure of Hulu Fashi, one of the most well-known Manichaean preachers in Tang China, and argue that while he devised the term Mingjiao (明教), the religion of light, to refer to the religion of Mani, it was appropriated later on by lay sectarians who adapted aspects of Manichaean teachings outside of a monastic institutional framework. Gunner Mikkelsen examines Tang emperor Xuanzong's Edict of 732 proscribing the practice of Manichaeism and notes its insistence on a perceived tendency among Manichaeans to present themselves as Buddhists. Li Tang rehearses the evidence for Christian presence and activities among the (Sino-Tibetan) Tangut people from the eighth to the fourteenth century and suggests that this phenomenon informs cultural and religious developments in nearby China from the late Tang to the Yuan periods.
Just as philology, historical linguistics, textual criticism, and historical studies contribute important intellectual pathways into the study of the topics treated in this volume, the history and priorities of modern (western) scholarship is itself worthy of closer examination. Aloïs van Tongerloo and Herman Seldeslachts revisit the objections made by two key Indo-European scholars, Antoine Meillet and Willy Bang [Kaup], in the 1910s to interpretations made by a colleague in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to highlight the importance of erecting an academic field on the foundations of accurate scholarly judgments. Ken Parry evaluates how the work Antiquities of Constantinople (De topographia Constantinopoleos) (1562) by the early modern French scholar Pierre Gilles or Petrus Gyllius shaped western European understanding of the early historical topography of Constantinople. Torbjörn Lodén compares Chinese and western European normative ethics from the past to inform how we might approach present and future east–west relations while advocating for more mutual understanding and merging of cultural horizons.
Byzantium to China confirms the critical importance of collaboration by specialists in a variety of (often quite arcane) academic fields for a meaningful understanding of a topic as vast and complex as the history of religious and cultural exchanges across pre-modern Eurasia. Furthermore, it demonstrates how Manichaean studies offer an excellent point of entry for anyone who wishes to study the premodern cultural and religious dynamics of the Eurasian world. Indeed, the study of the teachings of Mani and the spread of his religious message, texts, and institutional church in the east and west of the Eurasian world-continent requires and invites such shared investigations. Lieu has done all of us, especially those operating within an Anglophone sphere, an immense service by making these ancient encounters between Mani and his followers and the many groups with which their lives and fates were intertwined much more intelligible. Just as the Mani in the tradition appears as a person who possessed a precocious global (pan-Eurasian) vision and who, moreover, erected an enduring edifice in accordance with that vision, Lieu has played a broadly comparable role in helping to build Manichaean studies into what it has become today: a multi-lingual, text-focused, and world-spanning collaborative academic enterprise. As a Festschrift that acknowledges the scope and achievement of this accomplished scholar, Byzantium to China offers a florilegium of notable variety, richness, and depth. It is indeed a fitting tribute for the greatly valued scholar, teacher, and colleague that Professor Samuel N.C. Lieu is and represents.
