A further source of strength lay in the simple yet firm social organization which was given by Mani himself to his new institution.
According to Kessler, Mani made use of the teaching of Buddha, at least as far as ethics was concerned.
According to the Acta Archelai, his missionary activity extended westwards into the territory of the Christian church; but from Oriental sources it is certain that Mani rather went into Transoxiana, western China, and southwards as far as India.
According to the Fihrist, Mani made use of the Persian and Syriac languages; but, like the Oriental Marcionites before him, he invented an alphabet of his own, which the Fihrist has handed down to us.
As regards Mani himself, it is safest to assume that he held both Judaism and Catholic Christianity to be entirely false religions.
At the head stood the teachers (" the sons of meekness," Mani himself and his successors); then follow the administrators (" the sons of knowledge," the bishops); then the elders (" the sons of understanding," the presbyters); the electi (" the sons of mystery"); and finally the auditores (" the sons of insight").
Besides these principal works, Mani also wrote a large number of smaller treatises and epistles.
But at all events Mani himself, on his own claim, is to be reckoned the last and greatest prophet, who took up the work of Jesus impatibilis and of Paul (for he too finds recognition), and first brought full knowledge.
But in Turkestan, and as far as the Chinese frontier, there existed numerous Manichaean communities and even whole tribes that had adopted the name of Mani.
But the dominant priestly caste of the Magians, on whose support the king was dependent, were naturally hostile to him, and after some successes Mani was made a prisoner, and had then to flee.
By Ur, Ruha, while P'tahil was engaged in his work of creation, became mother of three sets of seven, twelve and five sons respectively; all were translated by P'tahil to the heavenly firmament (like the Archons of Mani), the first group forming the planets and the next the signs of the zodiac, while the third is as yet undetermined.
Developed in the late 1960s by the father-and-son team of Kavi Yogi Swarananda Mani Finger and Alan Finger, ISHTA is similar to most existing forms of yoga in that it makes asana and pranayama the centerpiece of its training.
Elect are these - Jesus and Vahman."The above examples bear out Mani's own declaration, as reported by the Fihrist, that his faith was a blend of the old Magian cult with Christianity.
For Manichaeism is an attempt to weld the doctrine of the Gospel and the doctrine of Zoroaster Manlchae- into a uniform system, though naturally not without lam, an admixture of other elements, principally Babylonian and Gnostic. Mani, perhaps a Persian from Babylonia, is said to have made his first appearance as a teacher on the coronation day of Shapur I.
From such a conception arose the teaching of Mani or Manes.
He certainly shows that the old Assyrian mythology influenced Mani, but not that this element did not reach him through Persian channels.
He regarded it as his special task to combat the views of Marcion, of Bardaisan and of Mani.
How does the number of times om mani padme hum is said affect one's life?
If even a small part of the stories about his father is founded on fact, it was he who first introduced Mani to that medley of religions out of which his system arose.
In genuine Manichaean documents we only find the name Mani, but Manes, Maims, Manichaeus, meet us in 4th-century Greek and Latin documents.
Indications of the influence of Marcionitism are found in the high estimation in which Mani held the apostle Paul, and in the fact that he explicitly rejects the Book of Acts.
It also may therefore have come to Mani through Magian channels.
It cannot be doubted that Mani, who undertook long journeys as far as India, knew of Buddhism.
It is said in the Mani Kambum to have fallen from heaven in a casket (Tibetan, samatog), and, like the last-mentioned work, is only known to us in meagre abstract.
It is the note of every great religious reformer, Moses, Buddha, Paul, Mani, Mahomet, St Francis, Luther, to enlighten and direct it to higher aims, substituting a true personal holiness for a ritual purity or taboo, which at the best was viewed as a kind of physical condition and contagion, inherent as well in things and animals as in man.
It is very difficult to determine what was the extent of Mani's knowledge of Christianity, how much he himself borrowed from it, and through what channels it reached him.
It may be held as undoubted that the later Manichaeans celebrated mysteries analogous to Christian baptism and the Lord's Supper, which may have rested upon ancient consecration rites and other ceremonies instituted by Mani himself and having their origin in nature worship.
It was also at this point that Mani - Gary Mounfield - joined the band on bass, after a tip from Inspiral Carpets' Clint Boon.
It was only when Mani had reached the age of twenty-five or thirty years that he began to proclaim his new religion.
Just as the background of Christianity was formed by the Hebrew scriptures, and just as the Hebrew legends of the creation became the basis of its scheme of human redemption from evil, so the Avesta, with its quaint cosmogony and myths, formed the background of Mani's new faith.
Kavi Yogi Swarananda Mani Finger, the father, founded the ISHTA school of yoga in the 1960s.
Kessler, the latest historian of Manichaeism, opines that Mani's own declaration on this point is not to be relied upon, and has tried to prove that it was rather of Semitic or Chaldaic origin.
Leaving Langtang, you ascend gradually to a chorten (a small Tibetan Buddhist stupa) behind which is a very long mani wall.
Mani appears to have given recognition to a portion of the historical matter of the Gospels, and to have interpreted it in accordance with his own doctrine.
Mani did not remain long in Persia, but undertook long journeys for the purpose of spreading his religion, and also sent forth disciples.
Mani himself composed a large number of works and epistles, which were in great part still known to the Mahommedan historians, but are now mostly lost.
Mani professed to blend the teachings of Christ with the old Persian Magism.
Mani, following the example of the gnostic Jewish Christians, appears to have held Adam, Noah, Abraham (perhaps zoroaster and Buddha) to be such prophets.
Manichaean tradition relates that Mani received revelations while yet a boy, and assumed a critical attitude towards the religious instruction that was being imparted to him.
Manichaeism indeed, though it applies the title "redeemer" to Mani, has really no knowledge of a redeemer, but only of a physical and gnostic process of redemption; on the other hand, it possesses in Mani the supreme prophet of God.
Miller's translations includes a long extract of Mani's book called Schapurakan, parts of his Evangelium, and epistles, with liturgies, hymns and prayers, for Tatar Khans who espoused the faith in Khorasan.
None the less Mani found means to diffuse his creed far and wide over the whole empire.
None the less, the stream of the Gnostic religion is not yet dried up, but continues on its way; and it is beyond a doubt that the later Mandaeanism and the great religious movement of Mani are most closely connected with Gnosticism.
On both sides of the great transition from being a Jewish to being a Gentile faith, Christianity, according to recent study, mani Enthus fested itself as " enthusiastic."
Paul's Christology therefore was of the Adoptionist type, which we find among the primitive Ebionite Christians of Judaea, in Hermas, Theodotus and Artemon of Rome, and in Archelaus the opponent of Mani, and in the other great doctors of the Syrian Church of the 4th and 5th centuries.
Persian dualism was brought into contact with Christian thought in the doctrine of Mani; and it is permissible to believe that the gloomy views of Augustine regarding man's condition are due in some measure to this influence.
Religionssystem (1831; in this work Manichaean speculation is exhibited from a speculative standpoint); Fliigel, Mani (1862; a very careful investigation on the basis of the Fihrist); Kessler, Untersuchung zur Genesis des manich.
So far as we can see, on the other hand, Basilides appears actually to represent a further development of Iranian dualism, which later produced the religious system of Mani.
The Adoptianist bishop Archelaus, who opposed the entry of Mani into Armenia under Probus c. 277, was also perhaps a Syriac-speaking bishop of Pers-Armenia.
The alphabet used is the one adapted by Mani himself from the Syriac estrangelo.
The Armenian writer Eznik (c. 425) also attests that Mani's teaching was merely that of the Magi, plus an ascetic morality, for which they hated and slew him.
The corpse was flayed, and Mani's adherents were cruelly persecuted by the king.
The electi celebrated special feasts; but the principal festival with all classes was the Bema (31ima), the feast of the "teacher's chair," held in commemoration of the death of Mani in the month of March.
The historical relation of Mani to Christianity is then as follows.
The most famous of the works ascribed to him is the Mani Kambum, " the Myriad of Precious Words " - a treatise chiefly on religion, but which also contains an account of the introduction of Buddhism into Tibet, and of the closing part of the life of Srong Tsan Gampo.
The name Buddha (Buddas) which occurs in the legendary account of Mani, and perhaps in the latter's own writings, indicates further that he had occupied his attention with Buddhism when engaged in the work of founding his new religion.
The physical and the ethical are not distinguished, and in this respect the character of the system is thoroughly materialistic; for when Mani co-ordinates good with light, and evil with darkness, this is no mere figure of speech, but light is actually good and darkness evil.
The prayers are addressed to the God of light, to the whole kingdom of light, to the glorious angels, and to Mani himself, who is apostrophized in them as "the great tree, which is all salvation."
The self-contradictory character of the present world forms the point of departure for Mani's speculations.
The writings and tenets of Mani were widely diffused there.
There can be no doubt that in the form in which Mani became acquainted with it Christianity had been disengaged and liberated from the womb of Judaism which gave it birth.
They anathematized Mani, yet were dualists and affirmed two principles - one the heavenly Father, who rules not this world but the world to come; the other an evil demiurge, lord and god of this world, who made all flesh.
They had accepted the teaching of Paul of Samosata, though at a later period the name of Paul was believed to be that of the Apostle; and they were not quite free from the Dualistic principle of the Gnostics, at a later period too much identified with the teaching of Mani.
They had to avoid idolatry, sorcery, avarice, falsehood, fornication, &c.; above all, they were not allowed to kill any living being (the ten commandments of Mani).
This distinction agrees with that made by the gnostic Basilides no less strikingly than the Manichaean criticism of the Old Testament does with that propounded by the Marcionites (see the Acta Archelai, in which Mani is made to utter the antitheses of Marcion).
This new faith was that of Mani, which spread with a rapidity only to be explained by supposing that Mithraism had prepared men's minds for its reception.
Thus the system, not indeed of Mani the Persian, but of Manichaeism as modified by Christian influences, accompanied the Catholic Church until the 13th century.
When, however, we turn to the numerous fragments of authentic Manichaean liturgies and hymns lately discovered in Turfan in East Turkestan, Mani's direct indebtedness to the cycle of Magian legends rather than to Chaldaic sources (as Kessler argued) is clearly exhibited.
Zittwitz assumes that this epistle was in its original form of much larger extent, and that the author of the Acts took out of it the matter for the speeches which he makes Mani deliver during his disputation with Bishop Archelaus.