Mani’s Living Gospel in a Chinese Ritual Manuscript: The Qingtian Mingshi Yinglun jing ke

Abstract

The recent publication of Manichaean manuscripts preserved by the Mingshi ritual tradition in Qingtian, Zhejiang, has brought to light substantial materials ultimately deriving from texts transmitted in Tang China. This article examines pages 23–48 of the Mingshi Yinglun jing ke 明氏應輪經科 (Ritual Manual of the Gospel of the Mingshi Tradition), a composite ritual manuscript centered on Mani’s Living Gospel. Its most significant feature is a sequence of eleven passages transcribing Middle Persian in Chinese characters. Building on previous identifications of sections (5)–(11), the article proposes new readings of sections (1)–(4) and the concluding words of section (11), and presents all eleven passages in six corresponding layers: Chinese transcription, reconstructed Middle Chinese pronunciation, normalized Middle Persian reading, Middle Persian transliteration, word-for-word English translation, and an English translation of the accompanying Tang Chinese interpretive rendering. The article further compares the Chinese text following these transcriptions with surviving witnesses to the Living Gospel in Middle Persian and Sogdian, quotations preserved in the Greek Cologne Mani Codex, and related materials in the Coptic Synaxeis. These comparisons indicate that a substantial textual core of pages 23–41 derives from a Tang Chinese translation or adaptation of the Living Gospel, although it has been combined with Chinese hymnic renderings and later ritual materials. Pages 41–48 praise the scripture, enumerate the benefits of copying, reciting, expounding, hearing, and preserving it, and conclude with ritual benedictions. The Qingtian manuscript thus preserves both previously unknown evidence for the Chinese transmission of Mani’s Living Gospel and a record of its continuing transformation within a local ritual tradition.