Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume IV/Manichaean Controversy/Introductory Essay/The Relation of Manichaeism to Buddhism

Chapter VI.— The Relation of Manich&#230;ism to Buddhism.

The extent of Mani&#8217;s dependence on Buddhism is a matter that has been much disputed.&#160; The attention of scholars was first directed to this possible source of Manich&#230;ism by the discovery of important features that are radically opposed to Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Christianity, and by the traditional historical connection of Mani with India and Turkestan.&#160; The antagonism of spirit and matter, of light and darkness, the mixture of spirit and light with matter and darkness in the formation of the world, the final catastrophe in which complete simplicity shall be re-established, only inert matter and darkness remaining to represent the Kingdom of Darkness, abstinence from bloody sacrifices, from marriage, from killing or eating animals—points in which Manich&#230;ism differs widely from the other systems with which it stands historically related—find their counterpart in Buddhism.&#160; It is certain, moreover, that they were fully developed in Buddhism centuries before the time of Mani.&#160; Baur, though not the first to suggest a connection of the two systems, was the first to show by a somewhat detailed comparison the close parallelism that exists between Manich&#230;ism and Buddhism.&#160; Baur&#8217;s reasonings were still further elaborated and confirmed by Neander. &#160; External grounds in favor of Mani&#8217;s dependence on Buddhism are the traditions of Mani&#8217;s journey to India and China, and of his prolonged stay in Turkestan, where Buddhism flourished at that time.&#160; But it is on internal grounds that we chiefly rely.

If space permitted we could illustrate the close parallelism that undoubtedly exists between Manich&#230;ism and Buddhism, from Buddhist documents which have been made accessible through Professor Max M&#252;ller and his collaborators in The Sacred Book of the East, far more completely than was possible to Baur and Neander.&#160; It is certain that parallels can be found in Buddhism for almost every feature of Manich&#230;ism that is sharply antagonistic to Zoroastrianism.&#160; The Buddhist view of matter as antagonistic to spirit is fundamental.&#160; It is the world of matter that deludes.&#160; It is the body and its passions that prevent the longed-for Nirvana.&#160; Buddhist asceticism is the direct outgrowth of the doctrine of the evil and delusive nature of matter.&#160; The Buddhist doctrine of metempsychosis has its precise counterpart in Manich&#230;ism, but it should be said that this doctrine was widely diffused in the West, through Pythagoreanism, before the time of Mani.&#160; The Buddhist tenderness for animal and plant life is paralleled by the Manich&#230;an.&#160; But there is considerable difference between the views on which this tenderness is based.&#160; The Buddhist feeling was based, in part at least, upon the doctrine of metempsychosis, animals and plants being regarded as the abodes of human spirits awaiting their release into Nirvana.&#160; The Manich&#230;an looked upon the elements of light (life) contained in animals and plants as particles of God, and any injury done to them as a hindrance to the escape of these elements, to be conveyed away into the Kingdom of Light.&#160; Both looked upon sexual intercourse as among the greatest of evils, though the theory in the two cases was slightly different.&#160; So of the drinking of wine, the eating of animal food, etc.&#160; The final state was conceived of in substantially the same way in the two systems.&#160; Nirvana, the blowing out of man&#8217;s life as an individual entity, is quite paralleled by the Manich&#230;an view of the gradual escape of the imprisoned particles of light into the Kingdom of Light.&#160; In both cases the divine pleroma is to be restored in such a way as to destroy individual consciousness.

The Buddhist Bhikkhus (or ascetical monks) correspond very closely with the Manich&#230;an Truthful Ones (Elect), and the relations of these to ordinary adherents of the parties was much the same in the two cases.&#160; Both systems (like Christianity) had the proselyting spirit fully developed.&#160; The position of Mani as a preacher or prophet corresponds with the Buddhist idea of the manifestations of Buddha.&#160; The statement is attributed to Mani that "as Buddha came in the land of India, Zoroaster in the land of Persia, and Jesus in the land of the West, so at last in the epoch of the present this preaching came through me [Mani] in the land of Babylonia."&#160; In the interest of his theory, which makes the old Babylonian religion the chief source of Manich&#230;ism, Kessler has attempted to detract from the significance of the Buddhist influence.&#160; Yet he grants that the morality of the Manich&#230;ans (including many of the features mentioned above) was Buddhist.&#160; The close connection of the two systems cannot, it would seem, be successfully gainsaid.