It is highly possible that the Manichaeans of Kellis or the Tarim Basin, if they were aware of such prohibitions, did not consider what they practiced to be magic of the sort prohibited by Mani. According to Ibn an-Nadim, Mani specifically proscribed ‘enchantments and illusions’. It is possible that Manichaeans did not consider protections and medical magic to be in the same category. Late antique Manichaeans could have understood Mani’s polemic only as anti-Zoroastrian or anti-Magian, since the Persians and the Zoroastrian high priest Kerdīr in particular, were the ones who martyred Mani and were the religion’s persecutors in its Mesopotamian homeland. Mani’s own writings and saying indicate the intimate relationship between medicine and what is now considered magic. While at the Sasanian court, Mani described himself simply as ‘a doctor from Babylon,’ and made his final defense at court before his execution on the virtue of his medical-magical services: “Many and numerous were your servants whom I have [freed] of demons (dyw) and witches (drwxs). Many were those from whom I have averted the numerous kinds of fever. Many were those who were at the point of death, and I have revived them”. [...] The Islamic writer al-Jahiz (died 868) reports that Ibrahim al-Sindhi once said to him: “I wish the Zindiks (the Manichaeans) were not so intent upon spending much money buying clean white paper and using shining black ink, and that they would not lay such great store on beautiful script, and in inciting their scribes to zeal; for truly, no paper that I have seen is comparable to the paper of their books and no beautiful script with that which is used there”. Manichaean communities often invested the entirety of their resources into the creation of manuscripts and books took on an iconic significance in the highest of their rituals: the Bema Liturgy where the book provided Mani’s personal presence for the congregation. [...] From this broad overview it appears that the Manichaean electus-scribe was the main engine of textual and ritual transmission, responsible for transmitting Mediterranean/Near Eastern magical traditions into Central Asia. The scribe was a constant, integral part of Manichaean society from the time of St. Augustine to the last glimmers of the Manichaean religion in China. As we see from Manichaean missionary histories and the letters of the elect themselves, the electi were responsible for recopying and physically transporting texts from the religion’s early centers in Iran and Mesopotamia westward into the Mediterranean and eastward into China as a central duty of their avid missionary activity. [...] One final piece of evidence for both the phenomenon of electus/scribal transmission and liturgical influence on the magical texts is the fact that the Central Asian magical texts were composed 1) in a Western Iranian liturgical languages (Persian and Parthian) as opposed to one of the vernaculars (Sogdian or Uighur) and 2) were written using the calligraphic Manichaean script as opposed to one of the cursive and informal vernacular scripts which were available for writing Middle Iranian languages. This was the same script with which Manichaean scribes recopied the Manichaean canonical works and the same script that such Islamic observers as Ibrahim al-Sindhi admired and over which they lamented that its beauty was applied to such heresy. The use of the cursive script and the liturgical languages suggests, in away analogue to Vales’ signature, that the Central Asian magical texts were also the productions of the Manichaean scribal elite too. It is possible that the Manichaean script incantation bowls could point to a similar conclusion, but without further evidence, either in the form of archaeological evidence of a Manichaean community like Kellis, or more securely Manichaean incantation texts, such a conclusion must remain tentative, ironic considering that the region was once Manichaeism’s birthplace and heartland. (Matthew P. Canepa - The art and ritual of manichaean magic. Text, object and image from the Mediterranean to central Asia)
Posted on: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 00:06:02 +0000
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