42
Parthian Songs
H
ere we encounter two more collections of Manichaean songs,
or hymn cycles, in this case songs from Parthia, an ancient
empire, originally corresponding to the northeastern Iranian
province of Khorasan. During the first centuries BCE Parthia was a vast empire
extending from the Indian Ocean through Afghanistan, Persia, and east to
Syria, but it declined when it was finally conquered by the Persians in 226 CE.
The first song, entitled Huyadagman (after the opening line, "How good for
us," or "How fortunate we were"), is a long poetic composition originally of
four hundred verses, which are divided into cantos. It is preserved in a
Parthian version, a Sogdian version (from Sogdiana, a province of Persia that
included Bukhara and extended through Samarkand), a Chinese version
(with a good deal of Buddhist language), and Turkish fragments. Sections
from the Parthian version are translated here. The second collection of songs,
entitled Angad Rosnan (after the opening line, "Deep companion of the beings
of light," or "Bountiful friend of the beings of light"), is also a long composi-
tion, and some of its apocalyptic themes are paralleled in the Apocalypse of
Thomas. Both hymn cycles are said to have been composed by Mani's student
Mar Ammo in the mid-third century. These songs (all fragments from larger
lost compositions) contain the essential range of themes in the life of a prac-
ticing gnostic. They speak of a soul in distress that is threatened by personal
weaknesses and surrounded by dangers from all sides, the soul's fervent long-
ing for salvation, the coming of the savior, and hence the promise to begin a
journey to the new paradise. Its verse, like that of the New Testament Apoca-
lypse, is a major extended poetic achievement.