Manichaeism in China: A Century of New Discoveries

Once considered a dangerous Christian heresy, Manichaeism is now seen as an early world religion astriding the Silk Road. Evidence for its presence in China was found among the Chinese texts discovered in Dunhuang in 1911. Since then, research on the history of Manichaeism in China, both as a foreign religion in the Tang and Yuan periods and as a secretive folk religion in China associated with peasant rebellions under the Song, has benefited from a series of discoveries—texts, inscriptions, artefacts, archaeological sites, paintings and so on. This article will survey the new material found in the intervening century and examine how a new chapter in the religious history of China has been written by an international team of research scholars.