Manichaeism

In the seventh century C.E., both the rise of Islam and the arrival of Manichaeism in China brought the religion into contact with new spiritual ideologies. Islam and Manichaeism had little in common doctrinally apart from minor elements of their shared west Asian heritage, which also contributed their common ritual patterns of prayer and fasting. Yet more speculative forms of Sufism and Shiism within Islam certainly drew on Manichaeism for ideas about the soul's affinity to God and transmigration. In China, Manichaean missionaries were able to draw upon, and perhaps help foster, developments within popular religion akin to Manichaean concepts. In Taoism, these included dualistic categorization of the cosmos and physiological alchemy, while in Buddhism they involved the ideas of a Pure Land (a realm of light and harmony as a goal of liberation from this world) and of Buddha Nature (an inherently pure nature in all things).

Manichaeism enjoyed a renaissance in west Asia under the tolerant Umayyad regime (661–750 C.E.), while the conversion and sponsorship of the Uygur Empire and its successor states in central Asia (c. 760–1100 C.E.) afforded secure conditions there, as well as within China, over which the Uygurs exerted strong political influence for a time. Such respites were short-lived. When public existence became untenable, Manichaeans found it convenient to take on the guise of Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and Taoists, while maintaining their distinct doctrines and practices in secret. The suspicion of secret Manichaeans within these other religions probably far exceeded their actual number, duration, or influence. But it is possible that lingering traces of Manichaean ideas and practices in popular religion contributed to sectarian developments within Christianity, such as the Cathars of Italy and France and the Bogomils of the Balkans, as well as within Islam, Buddhism, and Taoism. Nevertheless, the institutional structures and distinct identity of Manichaeism gradually eroded under relentless persecution, until the last remnant communities dissolved in southern China sometime in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries.