MANICHAEAN LITERATURE 573
Thousand Buddhas at Tun-huang (east-southeast of Turfan). Stein recovered
a long Manichaean confessional text entitled Confessional for the Hearers.
Also discovered were three Manichaean texts translated into Chinese from
Iranian-language originals, including the Treatise on Cosmogony and Its Im-
plications for the Everyday Life of Manichaeans (now conserved in Beijing),
the Hymn Scroll (now in London), and the Compendium of the Teaching of
Mani, the Buddha of Light (now in London and Paris).
Western scholars are now informed of the numerous recent discoveries of
Manichaean archaeological sites, artifacts, and texts in Central Asia and China
through the works of S. N. C. Lieu and Geng Shimin. As an example of a most
recent discovery of a Manichaean text in Chinese, Lin Wu-shu of Sun Yat Sen
University (Guangzhou, China) published a fragmentary Manichaean in-
scription that was found in Fukien Province. The inscription on the large stele
dates from 1315 to 1369, originally consisted of sixteen calligraphic Chinese
characters, and is similar to another Manichaean inscription in Chinese in the
famous Manichaean temple in Ch'iian-chou, also in Fukien Province. That
temple, discovered in the 1950s, is today the only known intact Manichaean
temple site and contains an intact low-relief statue of "Mani the Buddha of
Light." Near the temple were found inscribed (ritual?) bowls and three
Manichaean tombstones.
Greek and Latin TextsSensational discoveries of Manichaean manuscripts have also been made in
the West. Albert Henrichs and Ludwig Koenen announced in 1970 the suc-
cessful decipherment of a small parchment codex acquired by the University
of Cologne. The Cologne Mani Codex dates from the end of the fourth or the
beginning of the fifth century, or possibly later, and contains a Greek transla-
tion of a previously unknown Manichaean text originally written in Syriac,
with the title On the Origin of His Body. The text seems to be an anthology
containing quotations from the works of several of Mani's early disciples ed-
ited by a final redactor around a core of Mani's own autobiographical state-
ments. The traditions contained in the Cologne Mani Codex concern Mani's
latter days with the baptismal sect and his early missionary journeys after the
age of twenty-four, and thus they constitute some of the most important
sources of information on Mani's early life.
A fragmentary Manichaean parchment codex, the Tebessa Codex, was
discovered in a cave near Theveste, Algeria, in 1918 and placed in the National