The Buddha of Light: A Persian Religion in China

The Bringer of Light.

The last of its kind in the world.

The “Buddha of Light” (光明佛)—a statue of Mani, founder of Manichaeism, in his syncretic Chinese form (created 1131–1162 CE).

Cao’an Temple in Fujian is home to the last known representation of the founder of this Iranian religion. Driven eastward by persistent persecution, the Manichaeans found refuge among various Turkic peoples and in China itself, beginning in the Tang dynasty.

As adherents of a dualistic religion, the Manichaeans held that, to increase the light in the world and eradicate darkness, particles of light had to be purified of the matter that had clung to them when creation turned the proper order upside down. The human body itself was regarded as a kind of passageway through which the world could be set right and cleansed of the matter that clung to it, thereby saving both humanity and the world itself.

The religion was deeply inclined toward syncretism from its inception, and as it migrated eastward as one of the “three Persian religions,” it incorporated Christian and Buddhist themes into its teachings. The intellectual shock waves generated by Manichaeism’s migration to China led to the founding of various messianic sects, most notably the “White Lotus” sect and similar groups. Some of these were involved in major rebellions throughout the late imperial period, right up to the threshold of the modern era.

“All associations calling themselves ‘White Lotus,’ communities of followers of the Buddha Maitreya or of the religion of the ‘Radiant Lord’ (明尊, Manichaeism) ... that collectively observe unusual and heretical practices, and gather at night in secret places to perform rites and mislead people under the pretext of cultivating benevolence, shall be prosecuted.”

(From the legal code of the Qing dynasty.)

Some would say that the Manichaean ghosts of the past still haunt Eurasia, at whichever extreme you choose, to this very day...