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"New Evidence of Manichaeism in Asia: A Description of Some Recently Discovered Manichaean Temples in Turfan", Monumenta Serica, 44 (1996): 267-315

Abstract: Between 1902 and 1907, Berlin fur Volkerkunde sent three successive archaeological expeditions to Eastern Turkestan (Xinjiang), where they investigated the ruins and ancient grottoes of Turfan. Around Turfan, they discovered numberous ancient manuscripts and other relics. In 1909, the Science Academy of Russia also sent an archaeological expedtion to Xinjiang that was mainly dedicated to the investigation of the Turfan grottoes. Between 1905 and 1913, the German expedition published expedition reports and pictures proposing that among the ruins of the ancient cities of Harahoja and Gaochang there was a Manichaean temple as well as another temple which originally may have been Manichaean. In 1914, the Russian expedition published a report that mentioned that a Manichaean grotto possibly also existed in Bazaklik. In 1931, an archaeologist from the Academie Francaise also investigated this cave and, apart from confirming that it was a Manichaean religious grotto, proposed that another cave was also a Manichaean grotto.
In 1988, Takao Moriyasu from Japan's Osaka University investigated the Bazaklik grotto with the assistance of the Xinjiang authorities. In 1991, he published a monograph which pointed to another Manichaean grotto with inscriptions in the Uighur language.

The Manichaean religion was found in Iran by Mani in the third century A.D., later spreading West to Western Asia, the Mediterranean coast and Europe. It also continued to extend Eastward into Eastern Asia, Xinjiang, China's Central Plains, the Northern deserts, and the Southeast Chinese coast. In the East and the West, the Manichaean religion was an ascendant world religion that survivied into the fifteenth century. Modern research of the Manichaean religion began in the nineteenth century, taken up by Western scholars relying chiefly on Christian texts. The twentieth-century's first major discoveries related to Manichaeism were the ancient manuscripts and groud-level temple ruins that the German expedition excavated in Turfan during the early 1900s. This century's second najor discovery was of early Manichaean manuscripts dating from the third to the sixth century that were found in North Africa during the 1930's. However due to the dilapidated and fragmentary quality of the texts and the paucity of monastery ruins, our knowledge of Manichaeism and its temples has remained meagre.

In recent years, the author has led teams of research students to investigate the grottoes of Turfan. In three complexes of grottoes, these teams have succeed in identifying dozens of Manichaean grottoes. Some of these grottoes remain structurally complete, while others have retained many of their frescoes. These grottoes are extremely important for enhancing our understanding of the ancient Manichaean religion.