Such were the views in which Ardashir I. grew up, and in their energetic prosecution he found a potent instrument for the building up of his empire. It has previously been mentioned that Vologaeses III. had already begun a collection of the holy writ ings ; and the task was resumed under Ardashir. At his order the orthodox doctrines and texts were compiled by the high priest Jansar ; all divergent theories were prohibited and their adherents proscribed. Thus arose the Avesta, the sacred book of the Par sees. Above all, the sacred book of laws, the Vendidad, breathes throughout the spirit of the Sassanian period, in its intolerance, its casuistry degenerating into absurdity, and its soulless monot ony. Subscription to the restored orthodox doctrine was to the Iranian a matter of course. The schismatics Ardashir imprisoned for a year; if, at its expiration, they still refused to listen to reason, and remained stiff-necked, they were executed. It is even related that, in his zeal for uniformity of creed, Ardashir wished to extinguish the holy fires in the great cities of the empire and the Parthian vassal states, with the exception of that which burned in the residence of the dynasty. This plan he was unable to execute. In Armenia, also Ardashir and Shapur, during the period of their occupation, sought to introduce the orthodox religion, destroyed the heathen images—even those of the Iranian gods which were here considered heathen,—and turned the shrines into fire-altars (Gelzer, Ber. sacks. Ges. p. 135, 1895). Shapur I., who appears to have had a broader outlook, added to the religious writings a collection of scientific treatises on medicine, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, zoology, etc., partly from Indian and Greek sources.
A short time afterwards, the Roman empire followed the ex ample of the Sassanids and attempted to enforce unity of creed on all subjects : with Decius (A.D. 25o) began the systematic per secution of the Christians. For, meanwhile, the Christian religion had spread far in east and west with an equally zealous propa gandism and an equal exclusiveness and intolerance. In the countries of the Tigris and Euphrates, now altogether Aramaic, Christianity had everywhere gained a firm footing.' But its mis sionary enterprise stretched over the whole of Iran, and even farther. The time was come when, in the western and eastern worlds alike, the religious question was for large masses of people the most important question in life, and the diffusion of their own creed and the suppression of all others the highest and holiest of tasks. The man who thinks thus knows no compromise, and so Zoroastrianism and Christianity confronted each other as mortal enemies. Still the old idea that every religion contained a por tion of the truth, and that it was possible to borrow something from one and amalgamate it with another, had not yet lost all its power. From such a conception arose the teaching of Mani or Manes. Our knowledge of Manichaeism (q.v.) has been greatly increased by the discovery of many fragments of its literature in Eastern Turkistan (Turfan) ; but they all are sur passed in importance by a large Chinese manuscript in the British Museum containing translations of Manichaean hymns 'For the propagation and history of the Christians in the Sassanid empire, cf. Labourt, Le Christianisme dans l'empire perse sous la dynastie sassanide (1904) ; Harnack, Die Mission and Ausbreitung des Christenthums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten, 2. Aufl. (Igo6),
Bd. 11. p. 121 seq.; Chabot, Synodicon orientale (1902) (a collection of the acts of the Nestorian synods held the rule of the Sassanids).
and ritual ; the publication and explanation of it has been begun by Waldschmidt and Lenz (Jr. As. Soc. 1926, I Of. Die Stellung Jesu im Manichaeismus, Abh. Preuss. Akad. 1926). We can now clearly see that Manichaeism originated from a Gnostic sect. Mani, a Persian from Babylonia, proclaimed himself as the last and greatest apostle of Jesus and as the paraclete announced in the Gospel of John. But with the Gnostic interpretation of the Gospel he tried to combine the doctrine of Zoroaster and Jesus to create a new universal religion. He is said to have made his first appearance !s a teacher on the coronation day of Shapur I. At all events he found numerous adherents, both at court and among the magnates of the empire. The king even inclined to him, till in a great disputation the Magians gained the predom inance. None the less Mani found means to diffuse his creed far and wide over the whole empire. Even the heir to the throne, Hormizd I. (reigned 272-273), was favourably disposed to him ; but Shapur's younger son, Bahram I. (273-276), yielded to sacerdotal pressure, and Mani was executed. After that Man ichaeism was persecuted and extirpated in Iran. Yet it main tained itself not merely in the west, where its head resided at Babylon—propagating thence far into the Roman empire—but also in the east, in Khurasan and beyond the bounds of the Sassanian dominion. There the seat of its pontiff was at Samark and; thence it penetrated into Central Asia, where, buried in the desert sands which entomb the cities of eastern Turkistan, numerous fragments of the works of Mani and his disciples, in the Persian language (Pahlevi) and Syrian script, and in an East Iranian dialect, called Sogdian, which was used by the Mani chaeans of Central Asia, have been discovered.