“Never forget,” he says in the supposed testament that he is said to have left for the guidance of his son Sapor, “that as a king you are at once the protector of religion and of your country. Consider the altar and the throne as inseparable and that they must always sustain each other. A sovereign without religion is a tyrant, and a people which have no religion may be deemed the most monstrous of all societies. Religion may exist without a State, but a State cannot exist without religion; and it is by holy laws that a political association can alone be bound[[1011]].”
Yet in spite of these sentiments, more pithily expressed perhaps in the “No bishop, no king” of our own James I, the task of founding a common religion for the whole of the new Persian empire must have presented some uncommon difficulties. Apart from the strong Semitic element dominant in their Babylonian province, the Parthians had always been eclectic in matters of faith, and Vonones, one of the last kings of Parthia, had shown himself to be a Philhellene of a type which must have been peculiarly offensive to a sovereign who was trying to revive the old Persian nationality[[1012]]. The worship of Mithras, the god most favoured by the legions with whom Ardeshîr was soon to be at death-grips, must have been equally out of the question; and the knowledge of this is probably to be seen in the low place in the celestial hierarchy assigned to the old Vedic god in the Avesta of Ardeshîr’s day[[1013]]. The Jewish religion in Central Asia had lately given signs of proselytizing fervour, and it was the going-over of a Parthian kinglet against the will of his people to the Jewish faith which first, according to one account, gave the excuse for the intervention of Vologeses or Valkhash and the subsequent reformation or revival of the Zoroastrian religion[[1014]]. At the same time, Christianity had already begun to share with Mithraism the devotion of the legions stationed on the Roman frontier, and in the Gnostic form favoured by the teaching of Marcion and Bardesanes was pushing into Persia from Armenia and Edessa[[1015]]. Nor can we doubt that Buddhism, already perhaps struck with decay in its native country of India[[1016]], but flourishing exceedingly further East, was trying to obtain a foothold in that very Bactria which was afterwards said to have been the historic scene of Zoroaster’s activity. Other small, but, as the event was to show, highly vitalized faiths, were current in Western Asia, and the power of the Magi when Ardeshîr overthrew the Parthian power had declined so greatly that the statues of the Parthian kings were placed in the temples of the gods and adored equally with those of the divinities[[1017]]. The Persians of Herodotus’ time, who did not believe in deities who had the same nature as men, would have blushed at such a profanation.
From this unpromising welter of creeds and cults, Ardeshîr delivered the State by restoring the worship of Ahura Mazda as the State religion. One of his first cares was to collect the fragments of the books which we now know as the Zend Avesta, in which the revelations of the national prophet Zoroaster were set down in a language not then understanded of the people. It was afterwards said that the MSS. of these books had purposely been destroyed or scattered by Alexander; but the fact seems to be that they had fallen into discredit through the turning-away of the Persians towards Hellenic and Semitic gods; and that a previous attempt to restore their authority by Valkhash or Vologeses I, the Parthian king who reigned from 50 to 75 A.D., had met with little encouragement from his subjects[[1018]]. Most modern scholars are now agreed that the Avesta and the literature that grew up round it contain many doctrines not to be found in the Persian religion current in Achaemenian times, and evidently brought into it from foreign sources under the Hellenistic and Parthian kings. Such as it is, however, the Avesta formed the Sacred Book of Ardeshîr’s reformation; while, in the order of the Magi, by him restored to more than their former power, the reformed Zoroastrian faith possessed an active, established, and persecuting Church, which reigned in Persia without a serious rival until the Mahommedan invasion.
Yet the first struggles of the reformation must have been sharp, and Darmesteter was doubtless justified when he saw in Manichaeism the first and possibly the strongest expression of the revulsion of Ardeshîr’s subjects against the rigid orthodoxy which he sought to impose upon them[[1019]]. That such a feeling persisted for some time is plain from the fact that Manes’ “heresy” is said by Al-Bîrûnî to have been followed by that of Mazdak, who seems to have preached, like the Antinomian sects of Cromwell’s time, a kind of Socialism including the community of women and of property[[1020]]. There arose also about the same time or a little later the sect of Zervanists referred to in the chapter on Mithras, who taught that Boundless Time was the origin of all things and was superior to Ormuzd and Ahriman, to both of whom he was said to have given birth. They seemed to have gained great power in the reign of Yezdegerd II; and, if we may trust the Armenian authors, a proclamation commanding adherence to their doctrines was put forth by Yezdegerd’s general Mihr Nerses on his invasion of Armenia in 450 A.D.[[1021]] But the earliest and most enduring of these heresies or rebellions against the purified and restored religion of Ahura Mazda appears to have been that of Manes.
Were now the doctrines that Manes preached to his own undoing his invention, or did he draw them from some pre-existent source? It is said, in a Christian account which has come down to us, that they were the work of one Scythianus[[1022]], a native, as his name implies, of “Scythia” (which here probably means Turkestan) and a contemporary of the Apostles, who married an Egyptian slave and learned from her all the wisdom of the Egyptians[[1023]]. With the help of this and the tincture of dualism which he extracted from “the works of Pythagoras,” the story goes on to say, Scythianus constructed a system which he taught to a disciple named Terebinthus, otherwise called Buddas or Buddha, before his own death in Judaea[[1024]]. This Terebinthus gave out that he was born of a virgin and had been nursed by an angel on a mountain; and he also wrote four books in which the doctrines of Scythianus were set down[[1025]]. These books he entrusted to an aged widow with whom he lived, and he was afterwards struck dead while performing a magical ceremony. On his death, she bought a boy of seven years old named Corbicius, whom she enfranchised, and to whom she left her property and Terebinthus’ books some five years later. Thus equipped, Corbicius took the name of Manes, which may signify “Cup” or “Vessel[[1026]],” and began to preach. This history has evidently been much corrupted and by no means agrees with the account before quoted from Oriental sources which bears greater marks of authenticity; but it is thought by some to be, like the 14th chapter of Genesis, a sort of allegory in which the names of peoples and systems are given as those of individual men[[1027]]. If this be so, we should perhaps see in Scythianus the representative of those non-Aryan tribes of Medes of whom the Magi formed part, while in the name of Buddha we might find that of one of those Judaean communities holding a mixture of Magian and Buddhist tenets who according to one tradition were for long encamped near the Dead Sea[[1028]]. Yet there is nothing specifically Buddhist or Egyptian about the doctrines of Manes as we know them[[1029]], and if there were any likeness between the mythology and observances of the cult and those of its predecessors, it was probably introduced by Manes’ followers rather than by himself[[1030]]. As to the doctrines of the Magi, Manes certainly had no occasion to go to Judaea to find them; for in the Persia of Ardeshîr and Sapor he must have heard quite as much of them as he wished.
Probably, therefore, the Christian account of Manes’ sources is untrue, or rather, as M. Rochat suggests, it was composed at a time and place in which Manichaeism had become a heresy or alternative creed attached, so to speak, not to Zoroastrianism but to Christianity, and had picked up from this and other faiths many accretions[[1031]]. The doctrine of Manes which has come down to us from other sources is extremely simple, and seems to accord better with the Puritanical simplicity of life and ritual afterwards practised by his followers. Both the Christian and the Mahommedan traditions agree that he believed that there were two gods, uncreated and eternal, and everlastingly opposed to each other[[1032]]. One of these is the God of Light and the other the God of Darkness; but he does not seem to have given any specific or proper name to either[[1033]]. It is possible that this last-named being may have been identified by him with Matter[[1034]], although this would seem to be a remnant of the Platonic philosophy of which there is no other trace in his teaching. But it is certain that he regarded the God of Darkness as entirely evil, that is to say, malevolent, and as a power to propitiate whom man should make no attempt. “I have considered it needful to despatch this letter to you” says an epistle which there is much reason to consider expresses the opinions, if not the actual words, of Manes himself[[1035]]:
“first for the salvation of your soul and then to secure you against dubious opinions, and especially against notions such as those teach who lead astray the more simple (ἁπλούστεροι), alleging that both good and evil come from the same Power, and introducing but one principle, and neither distinguishing nor separating the darkness from the light, and the good from the bad and the evil (φαῦλον), and that which is without man from that which is within him, as we have said formerly, so that they cease not to confuse and mingle one thing with another. But do not thou, O my son, like most men, unreasonably and foolishly join the two together nor ascribe them both to the God of Goodness. For these teachers attribute to God the beginning and the end, and make him the father of these ills the end of which is near a curse[[1036]].”
Although this epistle bears evident marks of having been worked over and amplified by some writer of a later age than that of the founder of Manichaeism, there cannot be much doubt that it contains his teaching on the Two Principles of all things. In the Christian account of Manes’ doctrine which M. Rochat thinks earlier than the epistle quoted above, Manes’ quondam follower Turbo says after recantation that his master reverences two gods “unbegotten, self-existing (αὐτοφυεῖς), eternal and set over against each other,” and that “he represents one as good, the other as wicked, giving to the one the name of Light and to the other that of Darkness[[1037]].” So, too, the Mahommedan writers who give what seems to be an independent account of Manes’ opinions are agreed that he deduced the origin of the world from “two Original Principles, one of which is Light and the other Darkness, and which are separated one from the other[[1038]].” The absolute opposition from the outset of good and evil therefore formed the pivot of Manes’ whole system, and was opposed quite as much to the Christian and Jewish creeds as to the Mithraic and other modifications of Persian religious ideas then or later in vogue, which held that evil like good was the creation of the Supreme Being, and that Ahriman or Pluto was a god having subordinate authority to, but of the same nature as, Ormuzd or Zeus. This uncompromisingly dualistic theory gives an origin to evil independent of that of good, and can only lead logically to the assertion of its eternity. Whether Manes gave utterance to it for the first time, or derived it from a theology then current in Persia, there is little evidence to show[[1039]]. The Zend Avesta itself in its Sassanian recension does not seem to pronounce clearly on this point, and has been thought by some high authorities to teach the subordinate origin and ultimate extinction of evil[[1040]], and by others exactly the reverse. It does, however, seem to be clear that unless Manes invented de novo the doctrine above quoted, it must have been from Persia that he obtained it. No other country with which he can have become acquainted has yet been shown to possess it[[1041]].
Exclusively Oriental, too, in its origin must be the history of the conflict between these two Principles which follows. Each of them apparently dwelt in his own domain for countless ages untroubled by the existence of the other. The Light is the uppermost and is, according to the Mahommedan version of Manes’ doctrine, without bounds in height and on each side. The Darkness lies below it, and is in like manner boundless in depth and in lateral extent[[1042]]. Hence there is a long frontier at which they touch, and this spot was filled from the beginning by the celestial air and the celestial earth. If we may read into the tradition something which is not expressed there, but which seems to follow logically from it, this atmosphere and this earth were the heavier parts of the Divine substance, which sinking down formed a kind of sediment or deposit[[1043]]. Each of these Two Principles has five “members” or components, and this partition into five seems in the Manichaean teaching to run through all things. Thus, the Mahommedan tradition tells us that the “members” of the God of Light are Gentleness, Knowledge, Intelligence, Discretion, and Discernment, those of the Air the same five, of the (celestial) earth, the Breeze or Ether, Wind, Light, Water, and Fire, and of the Darkness Smoke, Flame, Hot Wind, Poison or Pestilence, and Gloom or Fog[[1044]]. In this, and especially in its deification of abstract principles, we may see a reflection of Gnostic teaching which may easily have reached Manes from Valentinus by way of Bardesanes and the Oriental or Edessan School. On the other hand, the borrowing may have been the other way, and Simon Magus may have obtained these notions from the Persian Magi and have handed them on to Valentinus and his successors. This does not seem so likely as the other, but the point can hardly be settled until we know more than we do at present of the state of the Persian religion from the time of the Achaemenian kings to the Sassanian reform.
However that may be, both the Christian and Mahommedan traditions are agreed that the aggressor in the struggle between the good God and the bad was the Evil One. The Mahommedan source, here fuller than the Christian, tells us that the Darkness remained in an unorganized condition for ages, although consisting of the five members enumerated above. These parts, however, seem to have sunk down and produced another Earth called the Darker Earth, from which in course of time came forth Satan. Satan was not, like the King of the Paradise of Light, without beginning, but came into being from the union of these five members of Darkness, having the head of a lion, the body of a serpent, the wings of a bird, the tail of a fish, and four feet like those of crawling animals[[1045]], in which figure we may see a kind of reflection of the Mithraic Ahriman[[1046]]. Satan, on his emergence on the Darker Earth, perceived the rays of light from the upper world, piercing as we may suppose through the gloomy atmosphere of his own world, and conceived a hatred for them. Seeing, too, that these rays gained much in strength by their combination and mutual support, he withdrew within himself so as to unite himself more closely with his members[[1047]]. Then again springing upwards, he invaded the realms of Light with the intention of there spreading calamity and destruction. The aeon—or world as the Fihrist calls it—of Discernment was the first to be aware of this invasion[[1048]], and reported it to the aeon Knowledge, from whom it passed to the others in turn until it at last reached the ear of the Good God, here, as elsewhere in the Fihrist, called the King of the Paradise of Light. With the aid of the Spirit of his Right Hand, of his five worlds or members before mentioned, and of his twelve elements, of which we have before heard nothing[[1049]], he made the First Man, clothing him by way of armour with the five “species” or powers of the celestial earth, the Breeze, Wind, Light, Water and Fire as before enumerated[[1050]]. With these He despatched him to fight Satan, who in his turn did on his armour in the shape of his five “species,” Smoke, Flame, Poison, Hot Wind, and Gloom[[1051]]. The fight lasted long, but in the end Satan triumphed, and dragged the First Man down into the Realm of Darkness, where he took from him his light[[1052]]. During the fight, too, the elements had become mingled, so that the Ether henceforth was mixed with the Smoke, the Fire with the Flame, the Light with the Darkness, the Wind with the Hot Wind, and the Cloud with the Water. This it is which brings about the confusion or mixture seen in the present world, wherein everything which is beautiful, pure, or useful, such as gold and silver, comes from the armour of the First Man, and everything foul, impure, and gross, from that of his infernal opponent[[1053]]. After the fight, the King of the Paradise of Light descended with another Power called the Friend of the Lights, who overthrew Satan, and the Spirit of the Right Hand or Mother of Life recalled, either by her voice or by another power called the Living Spirit, the First Man from his prison in the lowest Darkness. The First Man, on his deliverance, in this account mounts again to the Realms of Light, but before doing so “cuts the roots” of the Five Infernal Elements so that they can no more increase[[1054]]. Then the King of the Paradise of Light orders an angel to draw the Confusion or Mixture of the Elements to that part of the Realm of Darkness which touches the Realm of Light, and to create out of it the present world, so as to deliver the imprisoned elements of Light from the Darkness with which they are contaminated. This is done, and a Universe having six heavens and eight earths is formed, each heaven having twelve gates, together with terraces, corridors, and places in such profusion as to point to some confusion in the translation into the Syriac which has come down to us. The only thing that concerns us in this, perhaps, is that the visible world, presumably the lowest of the eight, has a ditch dug round it in which is thrown the Matter of Darkness as it is separated from the Light, and outside this a wall so that it cannot escape. This is in view of the End of the World[[1055]].