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The Great Song to Mani
T he Great Song to Mani is a late piece of Manichaean poetry, probably composed in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. It was written in Turkish and is included in the same manuscript as another song to Mani, this one copied in two different languages (Tocharian B and Turkish). This second song, not given here, is much shorter. It rehearses much of the same material about Mani, but adds references to the god Ohrmazd and the god Zurvan, figures equated with aspects of the divine in Persian Manichaeism (for example, the first man) and derived from the Zoroastrian good god Ohrmazd (Ahura Mazda) and the divine principle of infinite time Zurvan. Both songs praise Mani in terms that are distinctly Buddhist, reflecting the years of exile that Mani was said to have spent in India, where he was exposed to the word and worship of the Buddha.
In the Great Song, Mani is described as teacher of what Jesus taught and author of a gospel book (probably the Living Gospel), but he is also addressed as Buddha Mani. The song alludes to aspects of the three jewels of Buddhism, the Buddha (who is Mani), the dharma (or law), and the sangha (or religious community). The four Buddhas of the song are most likely four prophets or messengers, Seth, Zoroaster, Buddha, and Jesus. After the four comes Mani, who attains his own incomparable buddhahood. He (and others) will escape the cycle of suffering (samsara ) and attain nirvana .
THE GREAT SONG TO MANI 1
MY BUDDHA MANI
O teacher of the original doctrine of the noble Jesus!
We are here to worship and revere you.
O my respected and famous father, my Buddha Mani!
We are here alone
to worship you from our heart of humility.
Be our hope and refuge
and receive the worship of each one of us.
Before you we bow with internal faith.
May each of our prayers be pure. 2
You told us the consequences of evil
. . . you blocked the road to hell
. . . preaching good laws.
. . . You rescued eight kinds of suffering beings
in poisonous savage animals. . . .
Unendingly submerged in the dust
of forgetting rebirths
and in a state of poisonous savage animals,
they were always mad.
When the passion of greed 3 poisoned them
and they were dying,
you prepared a medicine for them
from the herb of meditation.
YOU FREED FROM IGNORANCE AND GAVE WISDOM
They raved in the passion of anger;
they lacked sense or coherent though t
and you assembled their thoughts,
and so they understood their origin
in the realm of light.
Those living beings in the five states of existence 4
you freed from ignorance
and gave them wisdom,
leading them to parinirvana . 5
Many differing passions—hatred and bitterness—
troubled these thinking beings
and scattered their thought,
but holy father, when you descended from the sky,
the families of all thinking beings
reached the peace of nirvana . 6
YOU RESCUED FROM SAMSARA 7
We who are miserable and with no hope
would have stayed in the torture of samsara ,
not finding the end of your path. 8
You set up the ladder of wisdom,
you let us supersede the five forms of being,
and you delivered us.
We who were fettered in suffering
were rescued from rebirth
to see the Buddha-like sun god
who is like you.
For those tied to transitory pleasure,
you preached the true law .
You carried them across the sea of suffering
to the good nirvana .
For those tied to the root of attachment to the world,
you revealed the road to the realm of the Buddhas, 9
you raised a Sumeru mountain 10 of virtue,
you let them find endless happiness.
For those plunged in the water of pride,
you showed the bridge of the true law.
You took understanding of the good law into their hearts.
You entrusted them to the holy assembly.
For those confused by the six organs of perception 11
you showed the rising and falling states of being.
You revealed what is the suffering of those in the Avici,
the deepest Buddhist hell.
You let them be reborn in the blessed fivefold heaven 12 of light.
Look for the ways of salvation,
you crossed lands going to every side.
When you found humans needing salvation,
you rescued all.
YOU PREACHED THE JEWEL OF THE GOSPEL
To those like us who were lazy,
you preached details of the jewel of the gospel book. 13
We come on the ways of freedom and salvation
when we know them in the book.
If you hadn’t preached the pure law so fully,
wouldn’t the world and its thinking beings
have come to an end by now?
After the four Buddhas 14 you went dow n
and attained truly incomparable buddhahood. 15
You saved thousands
and saved them from dark hell.
You purged them of masterly cunning and deception
and caused them to help others.
You were a guide leading those in error.
You saved them from the claws of evil Mara. 16
You rescued the malevolent,
you healed the blind,
you caused them to do works of honor,
you showed them the right path to the land of the gods,
You were born the hope and refuge of the world.
You taught the seven precious books 17
and held back those about to join evil. 18
YOU DO GOOD TO ALL
Walking on foot and calling your name,
praising you with their tongues,
they would all love the same as children
who love their mothers and fathers.
Hugging them with your compassionate heart,
you brought them great help and prosperity.
Not distinguishing between relative and stranger,
you made them yours.
You counseled numberless people.
With your heart you do good to all,
and through your good
the afflicted overcome their sorrow.
You brought them great help and prosperity
in this way always.
Because of your virtue
you come into full buddhahood .
Through your insuperable tongue and generosity
you gave the jewel of the good law to us the miserable.
The families of the living lost their minds
through their dark passions,
yet they were reborn.
YOU EMBRACE EVERYONE
Through your great and compassionate heart
you put your arms around everyone
and rescued them from the cycle of rebirth,
saving them from samsara .
The blessed of pure heart
slowly came upon insight,
overcame malevolence,
and came to the statue of the arhats . 19
But pleasure, tying them to the world,
gave them mastery of cunning and trickery.
You brought them help and prosperity.
For those who forgot their origin,
you revealed who you are,
changing your form.
When all living beings saw your revelation,
they were inspired and desired only
to escape from the suffering of cyclical samsara .
To children you came in a benevolent form
and turned them from evil
and love of the world, to which they had succumbed.
Before the blue sky of the whole kingdom
you were born as the Buddha god of teachers.
KNOWLEDGE SHINES, COMPASSION GROWS
On seeing you, the living were happy
and with firm minds no longer doubted .
They obeyed your commandments.
Their good thoughts increased every day
and shone like the sun god. 20
The knowledge of light shone.
In their hearts compassion grew.
They obeyed the commandment to be sinless
and escaped the unending burning fires of hell.
They tried to keep the true law,
observe the true commandment,
and not fall into impure sin.
After knowing the transience of the body,
they left their houses and homes.
Following the good law, they were pure in body.
They made every effort to follow pure laws
and avoid the dangerous places.
To be reborn in the palace of immortality,
they observed the commandment to be pure in mouth. 21
They prayed for blessing
and to walk along the road of blessing
and escape terrible samsara .
They followed the commandment of blessed poverty. 22
In fear of the perceived transitory doctrines
and of the three evil ways, 23
they followed the three seals 24
to be reborn in the highest place. 25
GATHER, MEDITATE, SING
You agreed to command them,
to praise and sing songs,
to repeal their evil ,
to gather and meditate.
The living had been confused,
but when they heard your command,
their virtue was a teeming stream and river, 26
and they were reborn in the land of the Buddhas. 27
Other unworldly people
walked in pure paths
and meditated
and were reborn in the palace of immortality. 28
We bow our heads
and we worship before you, our highest god.
May the living on earth
be forever reborn in nirvana!
We worship. Our heart is steady.
May all the living on earth
escape dangers.
May they find the peace of nirvana .
So through the virtue of our praise and worship
may all holy forces
of the gods above and below
and of the diverse spirits
be magnified. 29