Bulletin of the Asia Institute

New Series/Volume 29

2015–2019

Published with the assistance of the Monimos Foundation

 Contents
Harry Falk Kushan Religion and Politics 1
Phyllis Granoff The Art of Protecting Children: Early Images of Agni 57
Étienne de la Vaissière The Faith of Wirkak the Dēnāwar, or Manichaeism as Seen from
a Zoroastrian Point of View 69
Dieter Weber Studies in Some Documents from the “Pahlavi Archive” (2) 79
Liu Wensuo, The Ephedra and Cannabis Discovered in Xinjiang 117
trans. Albert E. Dien
Anca Dan Heraclius, the Boar Hunter: Notes on the Hermitage Meleager
and Atalanta Silver Plate 137

Review Article
Philippe Gignoux
Un grand-prêtre parsi du 20ème siècle : Dastour Dr. Firouze M.
Kotwal 175

Books Received 179

v
 The Faith of Wirkak the Dēnāwar, or Manichaeism as Seen
from a Zoroastrian Point of View
É T I E N N E D E l A VA I S S I è R E
ehess
The debate on the religious interpretation of some
panels of the Wirkak funerary bed has concen-
trated on two possibilities, Zoroastrianism and
Manichaeism. It is clear that the dominant ico-
nography is Zoroastrian: the barsom, the priests
with padām, the rooster symbol of the god Srōsh,
in the eschatological scene the Chinwad bridge,1
and, maybe more important, the fact that the fi-
nal Paradise is the Zoroastrian one, the House of
Song—all that demonstrate that this is overall a
Zoroastrian tomb. However, if some key and cen-
tral parts can be identified as Zoroastrian, still
some parts cannot. I have proposed in two arti-
cles that some panels, or part of them, can only
be understood as reflecting Manichaean texts and
images.2 This has been accepted in some articles,3
contested in others.4 I will provide here new texts
and references, which, I hope, settle the question,
paying special attention to texts earlier than the
tomb.
The Seated Buddha Panel (Plate 1)
Among the recent results, S. Gulácsi and J.
BeDuhn have suggested that Maitreya iconog-
raphy might be at the origin of the Buddha-like
figure seated on a lotus throne in a mandorla, be-
cause of his loosely crossed legs.5 Indeed, there
is a dual iconography of Maitreya, as a Bodhi-
sattva, or as a Buddha in 6th century China.
This reinforces the Manichaean interpretation:
we have several hymns naming Mani Maitreya.
Mani was Maitreya on earth for the Central Asian
Manichaeans, as for instance in a Parthian Bēma
text: “Forgive my sins, oh lord! Buddha Maitreya
has come, Mār Mani, the Apostle: he brought
69
“victory” from the righteous God (the Father of
light). I would honor you, oh God! Grant remis-
sion of my sins, redeem my soul, lead me up to
the New Paradise!”6
This Mani Maitreya presides over a depiction
of the end of a hunt: preys and hunters kneel
face to face. In my previous articles, I was quite
vague on the link between Manichaeism and the
prohibition of hunting; I regarded as common
knowledge that Manichaeism was extremely hos-
tile to meat and hunt and its electi were strictly
vegetarian. However, there are texts that come
from the Manichaean themselves, for instance a
Pahlavi text from Turfan preserving the final dia-
logue between Mani and Bahrām, just before his
execution. An angry Bahrām, with Kerdīr at his
side, told Mani: “what are you good for since you
go neither fighting nor hunting” to which Mani
answered that he can heal people.7 Mani was in
essence the one who would not hunt. To stop
hunting was also used in the parables of Mani as
a metaphor of personal conversion, in a striking
parallel to this image.8
But there is more. The very first miracle of Mani,
when he came out as a prophet and converted his
first king, is to stop a hunt. The text is preserved
in the 5th century Mani Cologne codex, that is,
earlier than our image.9 It says that a king and its
court were on their horses going hunting. Mani
appears and the king and his court descend from
their horses and fall on their knees. If it is indeed
the king of Turan as supposed by Sundermann,10
then Mani is raised in the sky and shows the para-
dise to the king, who then calls him Buddha.
I think this settles the question as regard to this
panel. The first episode in the public life of Mani as
a prophet was to stop a hunt. Manichaean hymns
 d e l a v a i s s i è r e : The Faith of Wirkak the Dēnāwar

Plate 1. Buddha panel

Manichaean parallels.

1. Parallel with the

Yamato Bunkakan
Museum painting: same
layout. Oversized Mani
discussing on the top of
the panel, in a Mandorla,
on a lotus throne, with
followers in Daoist
dress.

2. Parallel with the

Turfan images of Elects.
No such hats in 6th c.
Chinese society.

3. Parallel with the

Cologne codex: Mani
ending a hunt.

name him Maitreya. Here, we have Maitreya in a
Mandorla of light stopping a hunt. This is exactly
that we have in the texts. To renounce the hunt
was a symbol of conversion for the elites. While
the Manichaean texts, earlier than our image, do
provide a direct and straightforward interpretation
of the panel, not a single Zoroastrian text could be
said to come even remotely close to these direct
parallels.11
The Rescue Panel (Plate 2)
In a previous article, I quoted an 11th century Is-
lamic text of Marwazī saying that Mani wrote his
books in a cave, pretending falsely to have fasted
during one year in it, an image well known in the
Islamic period.12 Since then, S. Gulácsi has dem-
onstrated that Marwazī was very accurate, and to
demonstrate that, she made use of the much later
Manichaean paintings from Southern China kept
in Japan.13 One single detail would be inaccurate
in the text of Marwazī, the cave.14 It is certainly
true that the cave is so far unattested in the very
fragmentary texts we have on the life of Mani.
However she also adds a very interesting piece
of data, which had escaped my attention: in the
mountains, northwest of Gundishapur, Mani’s
caves, where he is said to have spent one year,
were still shown in the 19th century.15 They are
still mentioned in local toponymy, on a small
mountain surrounded by higher ones at ca. 68 km
from Gundishapur as the crow flies.16 The link
Mani/cave/Gundishapur cannot be by chance.
There is only one simple way to relate it to the
cave story preserved in Marwazī and other East-
ern Iranian texts: as all of them put the cave on
the frontier of China and India, and do not men-
tion Gundishapur, it means that the local topo-
nymy in this mountainous area of the Southern
Zagros has preserved a different line of tradition,
but, as the story is similar, share a common root

70
 d e l a v a i s s i è r e : The Faith of Wirkak the Dēnāwar

Plate 2. Rescue Panel

⎧ Coptic Hymn parallel:
⎥ I beg thee, my lord Mani, Details: the cloth, diadem and prize in the
⎥ give me quickly the reward hands of the angels
⎨ of my faith and my prayers
⎥ and my fastings and
⎥ my alms that I gave in thy name.
⎩

⎧ let the three angels come

⎥ forth before me Parallels: Roman prizes (βραβεῖον)
⎥ and give me now (Mosaics of Piazza Armerina and Capsa)
⎥ my garland, the robe,
⎨ and my prize,
⎥ according to thy true promises
⎥ whim thou didst promise
⎥ to them that have believed in thee.
⎩

⎧ let not the demons frighten me

⎥ and the Erinys with
⎥ her frightful face
⎥
⎨
⎥ Cologne Codex parallel:
⎥ The entire world had become like a sea full of very black waters, and I saw
⎥ thousands and tens of thousands [of souls] brought down into it,
⎩ plunged down, bobbing up, and spinning about the four corners of the sea.

with the Eastern Iranian cave tradition. What
might be the date of this second, local tradition?
A learned guess on a forgotten past is not sup-
posed to remain in the local toponymy of remote
and unimpressive mountains: it should go back
to a period during which Mani and Manichaeism
were still a vivid remembrance locally. The local
story of the cave is certainly much more ancient
than the Central Asian version. In other words,
the cave story cannot be easily dismissed: two
different lines of transmission, a Central Asian
and a local, ancient, one, with no possible pro-
jection back of the former on the latter, preserve
it. That the cave story goes back to Manichaean
folklore is more probable than an early Muslim
construction. Unfortunately I cannot go beyond
this cautious conclusion, as our knowledge of the
biography of Mani, and especially of popular lore
elaborated from it, is at best patchy.17
But there is more. We have lists of titles of
Parthian hymns sung by Manichaeans in vari-
ous circumstances, and among them, the Death
Mass.18 I quote the hymn titles in their order of
succession:
1. “Free me from hardships and distress on
the day of departure.”
2. “Will you come, my saviour, to praise,
life-giver God lord Mani together with the
three angels.”
3. “Think, benevolent God, upon this believ-
ing soul of your own child, a Hearer, who
answered to your Call.”19
This is the Death Mass of a Hearer, in which
Mani was invoked as a saviour, with three angels.
It explains perfectly the image of Mani, at the top,
elaborating in the cave his divine message, and
sending the three angels to help Wirkak and his
wife drowning in a tossing sea.
This image of a tossing sea in which the souls
are drowning is specifically Manichaean, totally
foreign to anything Buddhist, in India or in China,

71
 d e l a v a i s s i è r e : The Faith of Wirkak the Dēnāwar
contrary to what I have written in 2005.20 We do
not have it at all in Buddhist iconography (where
at best we have traders stranded at sea in Jataka
narratives, as in the Cave of the Sea Farers in
Kyzyl) so that no Buddhist model can be adduced,
only a Manichaean one. M. Tardieu has demon-
strated the link of this image with the Near East-
ern religions.21
It is a Manichaean image since the very begin-
ning, and not a late Buddhist influence on Man-
ichaeism: in the Cologne Codex, in a dream,
Mani saw that “the entire world had become like
a sea full of very black waters, and I saw thou-
sands and tens of thousands [souls] brought down
into it, plunged down, bobbing up, and spinning
about the four corners of the sea.”22 It combines
perfectly with other Central Asian hymns saying
that Mani saved the soul of the Hearers from a
tossing sea, for instance the Great Hymn to Mani
in the Turkic Pothi Book, and many Parthian
hymns earlier than the 6th century, already men-
tioned in my previous articles.23 This combina-
tion entirely explains what we see on this panel.
The 4th century Coptic Psalm book summa-
rizes perfectly what we see along the three parts
of the panel:
I beg thee, my lord Mani, give [me]
quickly the reward of my faith and my
prayers and
my fastings and my alms that I gave in
thy name.
let the three angels come forth before me
and give me now
my garland, the robe, and my prize,
according
to thy true promises whim thou didst
promise
to them that have believed in thee.
let not the demons frighten me and the
Erinys with
her frightful face.24
No Zoroastrian text comes remotely close to
such a match.25
These three angels bring objects, on this grave
as well as on Southern Chinese Manichaean
paintings in the Yamato Bunkakan Museum.
This is a topos of the Manichaean judgment of
the soul, in all the texts, and lacking in the Zo-
roastrian ones. Ch.  Reck has gathered many of
these texts in her article on the Daēnā, especially
from the Iranian texts but also from the Kepha-
laia.26 There are many other ones, so that the im-
72
age of three angels bringing objects to the soul on
his path to Paradise is the normal way to depict
one’s personal fate in Manichaeism.
The earliest texts describing these objects are
the Kephalaia and the Coptic hymn. The Kepha-
laia describe how the three angels bring a prize
of victory, a garment of light, wreath, crown, and
diadem of light.27 The hymn has “my garland, the
robe, and my prize.” What is translated as “prize”
βραβεîον in the Coptic texts is, in the 3rd to 5th
century Near East and Mediterranean worlds,
a recipient with a palm in it: this was the prize
received for victories at the Games of late An-
tiquity. We have plenty of images of them, and
this vocabulary is also in use in Christian texts.
It has been variously translated as victory urn,
victory vase, although its nature is not entirely
clear.28 While the prize and the robe/garment are
common to both the Kephalaia and the hymn,
the garland of the Coptic hymn seems to sum-
marize the wreath, crown, and diadem of light of
the Kephalaia.
A second group of texts is much later, from
the 8th–10th centuries. In a Sogdian Manichaean
text, unfortunately uncomplete and not very
clear, we would have “and his own action, as a
wonderful god (or) as a facing god (who is) a vir-
gin girl will come before his face (with eternal
clouds) (?) and a drink in the (hand?), a flowery
garland on the head [. . . ] and she will be a guide
for him.”29 In another Sogdian Manichaean text,
however, we have a more standard list with the
robe, the diadem, and the crown, but also a neck-
lace,30 a list very close to the one in the Chi-
nese Manichaean Hymnscroll: they “receive the
three great triumphs, wearing the promised (or
so-called) floral crown with necklace of precious
stones, the ten thousand wonderful clothes and
pendants (受三大勝。所謂花冠瓔珞萬種妙衣串
佩).”31 More or less contemporary to these last
two texts, the list in Ibn al-Nadīm is however
very close to the Kephalaia one: three deities,
with whom there are a vase (rakwa), a garment,
turban, crown, and garland of light. The last tes-
timony is the Southern Chinese Manichaean
painting, where the virgins bring a vase with a
flower in it, and a banner.
This was an evolving list, maybe from a single
Ur-text, but which was reworked at a very early
date: the 4th century Coptic hymns no longer
have the wreath, crown, and diadem of light, but
instead a garland. The Manichean paintings from
China, which are beyond any doubt Manichaean,
 d e l a v a i s s i è r e : The Faith of Wirkak the Dēnāwar
no longer have garlands or cloth. The Chinese
Hymnscroll and one Sogdian text have a neck-
lace. These inconstistencies reach their highest
level on the Yamato Bunkakan Museum painting
from Southern China: there are several images
of the group of three women, with banners un-
known elsewhere. In one group, in the Judgement
scene, one of the women has a banner while the
other has the vase with the flower, but in a dif-
ferent image of the same group, on the top of the
panel, both have banners.
The question is then: does our image fit into
this evolving list? Does it have elements common
with both the preceding stage and the next stage?
One angel has a cloth in one hand,32 a second one
a diadem of light (a flat crown with small flames
all over) and the vase with a flower, the third is
helping Wirkak and his wife out of water. The
vase with the flower, both on our panel and on
the Southern Chinese painting, is clearly an icon-
ographic evolution from the Roman prize, from a
vase with a palm in it, the palm being unknown
in Central or East Asia, to a vase with a flower in
it.33 The vase is also in most of the manuscripts of
Ibn al-Nadīm. The cloth, robe or garment of most
the texts, is present in the right hand of the left
angel. The Coptic wreath, crown, and diadem of
light of the Kephalaia and of most of the texts are
depicted with the diadem of light.
It is actually the Southern China Manichaean
images that are the more divergent from the origi-
nal text: no cloth, no crown, but one or even two
banners. The second Sogdian text and the Chi-
nese Hymnscroll have intermediate lists, with
the necklace. The Wirkak image with the vase,
the flower in it, the cloth and the diadem of light
is a perfect intermediary between the texts and
the late Chinese rendering.
Beyond the (limited) diversity of the objects
themselves all along one thousand years, they
all belong to the category of prizes, the “Three
great prizes” of the Chinese hymn. Whether
necklace or banner, vase with palms or flower,
wreath, crowns or diadem, luxury garments, tur-
ban or cloth, they all convey the shared idea of
the top prizes in the diverse cultures of the hear-
ers. The idea of a prize had to be translated into
the iconographic languages of the various peoples
converted to Manichaeism. The evolution in the
list does demonstrate that this symbolism was a
living idea. Only in Manichaeism do we find such
an extensive and coherent corpus describing three
angels bringing prizes to the soul.
73
The Manichaean texts do explicitly describe
the logical link between the three registers of the
image as well as its details. The fact that these
texts come from Egypt demonstrates that these
are pan-Manichaean and early Manichaean ideas.
If there is still uncertainty on the date of the cave
narrative, the Psalm, the Death Mass, the Co-
logne Manuscript, or the Kephalaia form a coher-
ent model, which explains exactly what we see
on this panel.
Bridge Panel (Plate 3)
The Bridge panel is much more mixed. While the
Buddha and rescue panels are fully Manichaean,
a very different system is used on the last panel,
an attempt to make use of both iconographies by
juxtaposing them and mixing them. Some scenes
could make sense in both religions. I have already
argued that such was the case with Vayu, com-
bining F. Grenet and Y. Yoshida identifications.34
F. Grenet’s Zoroastrian identification of the top
center scene with the good and bad dēn fighting
might belong to the same bilingual register: the
combination of the Gandhara seal and a passage of
the Škand Gumānīg Wizār mentioning a dispute
for the soul is quite convincing.35 Quite, because
the image is out of place in the eschatological Zo-
roastrian process: it should have been before the
bridge. But with Grenet’s identification, we do
have a precise text and an iconography so crucially
lacking in the other Zoroastrian hypotheses made
on the other panels. The shape in the hand of the
winged deity can certainly be interpreted as a hu-
man being or a small jar.
Juxtaposed images are also in use: if the bridge
and Heaven are Zoroastrian, the idea of a tossing
sea below it and of monsters is not. We do have
quite a lot of texts on the Zoroastrian inferno, full
of fires, heat, and molten lava, totally different
from what is shown on the panel. In the Škand
Gumānīg Wizār the inferno is described as a des-
ert of thirst and hunger.
More generally, something is totally lacking
for a full Zoroastrian interpretation of a part of
this panel. All the Zoroastrian texts and the Sog-
dian iconography are extremely consistent in
their representation of the individual judgement.
Three gods are always present, Srosh, Mithra, and
the Judge, Rashn. We do have several examples
from Zoroastrian Sogdian ossuaries.36 These are
faithful depiction of the texts, where the balance
 d e l a v a i s s i è r e : The Faith of Wirkak the Dēnāwar
Plate 3. Bridge Panel
of Rashn is always mentioned. These images and
texts form a coherent model, too. This not at
all what we see here, Vayu seated in the atmo-
sphere: in the Manichaean Coptic texts the Judge
of humanity is described as seated in the atmo-
sphere, as demonstrated by Y. Yoshida.37 Vayu or
Ohrmazd are not judges in any Zoroastrian text,
while in Manichaeism the God seated in the at-
mosphere, Vayu in an Eastern Iranian context, is
the judge. With a Zoroastrian interpretation we
would have no judgement of the soul at all, which
should take place before crossing the bridge.
Similarly the three deities greeting Wirkak
and his wife are purely Manichaean. It should
be pointed out as regards to this panel and the
rescue one that only in Manichaeism do we find
the idea of angels bringing objects, understood
as prizes, to the Elects and Hearers. It is entirely
lacking in Zoroastrianism. No Zoroastrian texts,
which thoroughly describe the dēn, ever men-
tion the dēn bringing anything to the soul. It has
74
been supposed that, if the Manichaean dēn was
bringing objects to the soul, it should have been
modelled on the Zoroastrian dēn, so that the Zo-
roastrian dēn should have also brought objects.
But this projection back is only a hypothesis, the
Zoroastrian texts never say so and the only safely
identified dēn in Sasanian iconography has the
two dogs and the treasure of the good deeds, but
nothing to be given to the dead.38 It is not pos-
sible to make use of Manichaean texts, which
indeed describe precisely what we see here, to
project them back on the Zoroastrian dēn, and
then to use this very projection back to say this
is not Manichaean.
Moreover, as noted by G. Azarpay, there cannot
be three dēns for a single soul; the dēn is the soul,
sometimes symbolically divided in two for the
good and bad deeds, but the dēn cannot have any
assistant, this is the unique inner self.39 Actually
only Manichaeism describes the three angels com-
ing to the soul, with these objects in their hands.
 d e l a v a i s s i è r e : The Faith of Wirkak the Dēnāwar
With the Manichaean interpretation of this part
of the panel, we are in full agreement with the sal-
vation of the soul as described in the Manichaean
text and very far from the Zoroastrian one. The
parallels with the Southern China judgement of
the soul are direct. The Virgin of light is holding
a soul in her hand and fighting demons, as on our
panel, and the judge is seated above the angels,
holding their objects, among them the flower and
vase.40 As the Chinwad bridge, the priests, and
the ultimate paradise are Zoroastrian elements,
we can only conclude that this panel is a patch-
work, that two systems are used and combined
here, the soul is saved in both systems, and, a cru-
cial point, one system is not seen as conflicting
with the other.
It seems clear that two Manichaean images,
the Buddha panel and the rescue panel, have been
inserted in toto in the composite iconography
of this tomb. These panels correspond precisely
with Manichaean texts, created earlier than these
images. They have been inserted into a diverse
narrative, with a front panel clearly Zoroastrian,
many panels devoted to the life of a sartapao, and
a final partially Zoroastrian panel with the Chin-
wad bridge and the Zoroastrian paradise. This last
panel incorporates, in various ways, Manichaean
parts in its general Zoroastrian frame. To under-
stand the reason for this combination, I think it
is actually possible to go beyond the exact and
correct ideas of bilinguism and eclecticism I have
already proposed.
A key point might be the hunt, as it is a ma-
jor theme in the grave. Four groups of hunters are
actually on display: on the Buddha panel, on the
base two hunts—Iranian and steppic—and one
on the sartapao life panel, in which the sartapao
is not hunting with the king. On the An Jia, Yu
Hong, Tianshui, or Kouros funerary beds, the
sartapao is hunting. It figures prominently as a
symbol of his noble status and way of life. The
hunt is the symbol of aristocratic and royal status
in Iran.41 It was forbidden to commoners. Cru-
cially, the one single Pahlavi text mentioning the
Dēnāwarān, the Iranian Manichaeans, describes
them as renouncing hunting.42 The renunciation
of hunting should have meant something impor-
tant for Wirkak, an asceticism. We might sup-
pose that it was rooted in a Manichaeism seen
as a supplementary, gnostic, and ascetic way of
understanding Zoroastrianism, not opposed to it,
but as an add-on, more ascetic strata.
75
Manichaeism, after the first decades of perse-
cutions, survived and prospered at the very heart
of the Sasanian power. Wirkak (496–579) was an
exact contemporary to Khusrow I (501–579), who
tried to establish something like a Zoroastrian
orthodoxy, the one we can read in the Muslim-
era Zoroastrian texts.43 Wirkak, who in faraway
China had displayed on his tomb a more fluid
faith identity, may be a testimony to Zoroastrian-
ism of an earlier period, while reflecting the flo-
rescence of Manichaeism in 6th century Sogdiana.
With the texts from Egypt we have Manichaeism
as seen from a Christian point of view. In Tur-
fan this is Manichaeism as seen from a Buddhist
point of view. In Wirkak’s grave there is a touch
of Buddhism, with Maitreya, but it is essentially
Manichaeism as seen from a Zoroastrian point of
view, in a Zoroastrian context, a supplementary
way of saving his soul on top of the Zoroastrian
one, the faith of Iranian Manichaeism, that of the
Dēnāwarān. The orthodoxies of the 10th century,
both Zoroastrian and Manichaean, should not be
imposed on this 6th century more fluid religious
identity.
Notes
1. Grenet, Riboud, and Yang 2004.
2. la Vaissière 2005: 2015.
3. Grenet 2007; Azarpay 2011; Yoshida 2009.
4. Gulácsi and BeDuhn 2016; Grenet 2017.
5. Gulácsi and BeDuhn 2016: 15–16.
6. Text M80, trans. Klimkeit 1993: 134.
7. Text M3, trans. Henning 1942: 951.
8. Berliner Turfantexte 11, 13.2; Sundermann 1981:
116; Sundermann 1986: 262–63.
9. Cologne Codex 130, 8–131,14: ed. Koenen and
Römer 1988: 93, commentary Römer 1994: 72ff.
10. Text M8286, Sundermann 1981: 101.
11. Gulácsi and BeDuhn (2016: 16–17) proposed
that the monk in the mandorla might be the Sōshāns,
the last of the Zoroastrian saviours, but to do so
they have to mix the attributes of various different
Saviours from Zoroastrian eschatology, and to mis-
construct the theological message, that of a land in
which food (any food) is no longer necessary: this is
quite remote from the precise message conveyed by
the image, with the hunters (among them a lion) and
the preys graphically opposed, face to face. No Zo-
roastrian text prohibits hunting; they describe the
progressive end of eating, under a previous saviour.
Actually the Sōshāns is a prince and a high priest; one
text says that he will be the last mowbedān mowbed,
 d e l a v a i s s i è r e : The Faith of Wirkak the Dēnāwar
others that he himself has a kingly charisma (Cereti
2008: 43ff ). He is a fighter-priest and his main task,
and the only one described in detail, is to purify the
creation of Orhmazd of all the creations of Ahriman,
to destroy them, “to smite the lie.” He is victorious,
sōšāns ī pērōzgar! His main religious act is to sacri-
fice the Ox Haδayanš. Certainly the worst person to
represent him would have been a Buddhist monk. As
F. Grenet put it “this is surely an uncomfortable op-
tion for an Iranologist, who would expect the Sōshāns
to look even more Iranian, perhaps more specifically
as a Zoroastrian priest.” (Grenet 2017: 2). The obvi-
ous iconographic model should indeed have been a
Sasanian high priest, of which we do have several im-
ages in Sasanian art. Priests are depicted on the Bridge
panel. The idea that it would have been difficult to
represent the Sōshāns within Iranian art, and that the
artists, for lack of Iranian models of high priests, had
to rely on Buddhist art to do so, leads nowhere. But in
reality we have no reason to think that the Sōshāns
was ever depicted in Sasanian or Sogdian Zoroastrian
art. He is also totally absent from Sogdian or Bactrian
onomastics. The hypothesis of a unicum is no match
for precise parallels: Mani forbade hunting, and was
Maitreya, the Buddha of light, in explicit texts. Zoro-
aster or Sōshāns never did nor were.
12. la Vaissière 2015: 101–3.
13. Gulácsi 2015: 163.
14. Gulácsi and Beduhn 2016: 9–10.
15. Gulácsi 2015: 193.
16. At 32°50’18”N, 48°12’22”E.
17. The differences between the Western and East-
ern traditions on the life of Mani ran deep at a very
early date. See Sundermann 1986b discussing the very
early differences between the Cologne Mani Codex and
the Šābuhragān.
18. I owe these data to Frantz Grenet, who pointed
to me a footnote of Mary Boyce (1954: p. 23, n. 7) men-
tioning these lists.
19. Text M4c l. 12, ed. in Salemann 1908: 5. My
most sincere thanks to D. Durkin-Meisterernst and N.
Sims-Williams for helping me to translate these titles.
All mistakes are mine.
20. la Vaissière 2005: 361.
21. Tardieu 1995.
22. Cologne Codex 77.4–78.20, trans. Cameron and
Dewey 1982: 61–63.
23. Clark 1982: 182; Boyce 1954: 81–83.
24. Allberry 1938: 84.
25. Grenet 2017, p. 4. has proposed an explanation
for the three angels, i.e. three spirits of good action,
speech, and thought comforting the soul at death, men-
tioned in the 9th c. Dādestān ī Dēnīg. But these spirits
are not sent by any prophet or hermit, not described
as bringing any object, not pulling the dead from wa-
ter, and they are supposed to be at the death bed of the
devotee, lingering around the corpse, with a fire at his
76
head, bed, fire, and corpse totally absent here, while
very often described in the Zoroastrian texts.
26. Reck 2003.
27. Kephalaion 7: Polotsky 1933: 72–73.
28. There is a dispute on whether it might be an
oversized crown instead of an actual vase or a basket.
But the main point is that it was used to put palms in
it. See the discussion in Specht 2000. It was associated
with the lot urn and bags of cash, as on the mosaic of
Capsa.
29. Trans. Yoshida 2009, p. 701. Text edited in Reck
2003.
30. M 6132. Reck 2003: 330. There are several very
fragmentary Manichaean texts in Sogdian mentioning
the three “meeting ones” (ptycyḫ). See Sims-Williams
and Durkin-Meisterernst 2012 sub lemma ptycy. I owe
this information to Y. Yoshida.
31. Trans. Tsui 1943: 213.
32. BeDuhn and Gulácsi (2016: 10–11) had to deny it
so as to ruin the obvious parallel with Ibn al-Nadīm. But
the cloth in the right hand of the left angel is perfectly
clear (plate 2). Similarly I do not understand how they
can write that no vase is mentioned in Ibn al-Nadīm:
the word used in his text, rakwa, means a small vase
for drinking, according to the Lisan. Similarly, I am also
somehow surprised that they wrote (p. 10) “The Fihrist
passage, however, does not provide a relevant point of
comparison with this scene, since it regards the post-
mortem experience of an elect—that is, a member of
the Manichaean sacerdotal class, whereas laypeople
such as Wirkak and Wiyusi would have a completely
different fate.” Actually, the very next paragraph in Ibn
al-Nadīm describes this so-called different fate: “When
death comes to a man who is a combatant, who ac-
cepts the cult and righteousness, caring for these things
as well as for the Elect, those deities whom I have al-
ready mentioned are present . . .” (Ibn al-Nadīm, trans.
Dodge 1970: 795).
33. Differently Pedersen and larsen 2013: 359, who
mention a philological explanation by Polotsky through
Aramaic, while I am considering an iconographic one.
The Southern Chinese Manichaean paintings prove in
any case that at one point it was understood as a vase.
34. la Vaissière 2015: 107.
35. Grenet 2017: 7–8.
36. For instance, Berdimuradov et al. See also Shen-
kar 2015.
37. Yoshida 2009: 11.
38. Shenkar 2015.
39. Azarpay 2011: 63.
40. Azarpay 2011: 64–66. It is clear that the deities
of the Yamato Bunkakan Museum painting and of
Wirkak’s are similar, but grouped differently.
41. Gignoux 1983.
42. “As to dēnwarān, for the sake of study, not to
hunt is a duty; and the other persons, except when their
wealth is at least three hundred ster-s, are not authorised
 d e l a v a i s s i è r e : The Faith of Wirkak the Dēnāwar
to hunt for the sake of hunting.” Šayast-nē-šāyast, §8.3,
trans. Tavadia 1930: 105. The context is Sassanian as
demonstrated by the mention of staters (ster-s). How-
ever, it is to be noticed that this text nor any other in
Pahlavi and Persian literature, which describe in depth
the Zoroastrian priests, the believers, and the rituals of
this period, ever use dēnwarān for any of them. The clos-
est we have is a mention in the Anthology of Zādspram
(25.10) of the direct disciples of Zoroaster in Antiquity
under this name. Only the Manichaeans made use of
this name as their own in late Antique Iranian society,
and there is no reason to doubt that these are the Man-
ichaeans that are mentioned here.
43. Rezakhani 2014: 12.
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