Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms by Gerard Russell Read Free Book Online Page B

however, he found his own community’s rules too lax. Giving up meat was not enough, he said. To kill and eat vegetables was cruel to plants, and he could even hear the fig tree weep for the fruit that was cut from its branches. The springs of fresh water complained, he said, when the Mughtasila bathed in them, because they were polluting the water. (His own followers in later years apparently would wash themselves using their own urine instead.) Eventually Mani claimed to have received a new revelation—an account of a cosmic battle between light and darkness.

    A modern representation of Mani, a third-century founder of a religion that competed with early Christianity and whose division of the universe between good and evil gave rise to the term “Manichean.” He was preceded and influenced by the Mandaeans.
    According to St. Augustine, who followed Mani’s teachings for a time before becoming a Christian, Mani taught that the universe contained “two antagonistic masses, both of which were infinite”—one good, the other evil. “Evil was some . . . kind of substance, a shapeless, hideous mass . . . a kind of evil mind filtering through the substance they called earth.” Evil was the source of all darkness in the universe, including eclipses of the sun and moon and the alternation of day and night. To Mani, day following night, and night following day, were signs of a constant battle between light and darkness. To this day, we speak of a “Manichean worldview” to mean one that divides the world into the forces of good and the forces of evil. ( Mani chai was what Mani’s followers cried in Aramaic: it means “Mani is alive.” So his followers came to be called Manichees or Manicheans.)
    For religiously enlightened Manichees, the highest calling was to free the spirit from the bonds of matter. For the truly committed—the “elders,” as they were called (the same word, sheikh in Arabic, is applied to Mandaean priests)—this meant never having children, eating only fruit, and atoning for plucking that fruit. Wasting water was a sin. Killing animals was unthinkable. Strict Manichees would not kill a fly. “Let [the country] . . . with smoking blood change into one where the people eat vegetables,” as a Manichee prayer declared. The religion also offered a chance of salvation, however, to people who wanted to follow Mani without observing all his rules: after all, someone had to commit the sin of plucking the fruit for the elders to eat. The elders absolved their followers of this sin by digesting their food according to a strict ritual, which was meant to liberate the fragments of light trapped inside the food. This structure of elders and followers meant that the religion had people of exemplary austerity who were capable of interceding with God on behalf of the whole community, leaving their followers free to live as they chose, provided that they maintained and respected the elders. As we will see, this structure is still used by some Middle Eastern faiths today.
    In around the year 240 Mani left the marshes and the community where he had been brought up and traveled east to the capital of the Parthian Empire. He was a distinctive figure in his multicolored coat, striped trousers, and high boots. Helped by his family’s aristocratic connections and the general laissez-faire attitude of the Parthians toward religion, he almost succeeded in converting the emperor to his cause—and was executed for his efforts. But his religion continued to spread. As his followers went east from Iran, they relied on Buddhist iconography to explain their message. Mani was presented as “the Buddha of Light.” A Manichee kingdom was established among the central Asian Uyghurs. In later centuries, Manichees became numerous in China, where they were best known for their refusal to eat meat. “Vegetarian demon worshipers” was the way the authorities described them in an edict in 1141. Official persecution