The Compendium
Manichaean Text from Dun-Huang

"The Compendium (Moni guang-fu jiao-fa yi-lüe, lit. “outline of the teachings and rules of Mani, Buddha of light”; text in Lin, 1987, pp. 230-33; Taisho@, no. 2141 A, pp. 1279c17-1281a11; Eng. tr. of pp. 1279c17-1280c12 in Haloun and Henning; Fr. tr. of pp. 1280c12-1281a11 in Chavannes and Pelliot, 1913, pp. 107-16; Ger. tr. of entire text in Schmidt-Glintzer, l987b, pp. 69-75). This manuscript has been divided; the main portion is in the British Library, and a large fragment, containing the concluding sections, is in the Bibliotheàque Nationale, Paris (Lin, 1988). According to the first paragraph, the work was translated in response to an imperial order issued 16 July 731. The Compendium contains a summary of Manichean doctrines, beginning with an account of Mani's birth that is clearly modeled on that of the Buddha and has no known parallel in Iranian or western Manichean texts. It also contains a long passage from the Taoist polemic Lao-zi hua-­hu jing (Lao-tzu converts the barbarians; see, e.g., Schmidt­-Glintzer,1987b, p. 71), in which Mani was depicted as an avatar of Lao-tzu, the traditional founder of Taoism; this “scripture” was a focus of controversy between Taoists and Buddhists in China and is unlikely to have been translated directly from one of the Central Asian language. The association of Mani with Lao-tzu was probably partly instrumental in the survival of Manicheism in China after the Tang period."