Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism in China

[Roma_Victrix]

In 845 AD, Emperor Wuzang of Tang initiated the third of Four Great Persecutions of Buddhism in China, yet a bunch of minority religions were also deeply affected. It seems that after this point Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, and Nestorian Christianity declined, went underground, and finally disappeared (although Nestorian Christianity would make a comeback in the 13th century thanks to the Mongol invasions). Islam on the other hand continued to be practiced unabated, minus that horrific genocide in 879 AD by the Han Chinese rebel Huang Chao, whose soldiers basically killed as many Persians and Arabs they could find living in Guangzhou (numbering over a hundred thousand). There is still a sizeable Hui Muslim ethnic group in China to this day, a very Sinicized one compared to the Turkic Uyghurs and Xinjiang Tajiks (the Hui basically being just Han Chinese people who don't eat pork, lol). After all, that famous 15th-century Ming naval admiral Zheng He was a Muslim, albeit a castrated one. Even the Kaifeng Jews have persisted into the present day, their presence noted with some curiosity when the Italian missionary Matteo Ricci encountered them in China during the late 16th century.

Two years before the aforementioned persecution (i.e. 843 AD), Manichaean monasteries had been ransacked of their properties by the Tang government, thanks to the outbreak of war with the Uyghur Khaganate. It was the Uyghur Turks who were responsible for establishing the first Manichaean monastery in China a century before this, after many of them converted thanks to their close ties with the Sogdian merchants of Central Asia and China. The Indo-European Sogdians had previously built dozens of Zoroastrian temples across China, in cities such as Chang'an, Luoyang, and Xiangyang. Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism still existed in China during the Song and obviously the Yuan dynasties, but as far as I know none of these temples and monasteries survived into the later Ming Dynasty (14th century).

My question is this: why did Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism never make a comeback in Chinese history? Was it largely because the civilizations that once sponsored these faiths, Persia and Sogdia, had been converted to Islam thanks to the Islamic conquests in those regions? There are still Zoroastrians living in India and Iran to this day, although their numbers are very small compared to the other major world religions. Christianity was only really revived after the introduction of Catholocism in the 16th century thanks to Spaniards and Portuguese washing up on the southern shores of China, followed by Protestant Englishmen and Dutchmen in the 17th century. Why did Hinduism never really spread to China, especially when considering the Indian merchants living there?

[+Marius+]

Was it largely because the civilizations that once sponsored these faiths, Persia and Sogdia, had been converted to Islam thanks to the Islamic conquests in those regions?

That is most likely the case in my opinion.

Without a proper base and the prestige or political power of other "state" religions, it is difficult to spread a teaching.

It is very difficult to convince people to become a religious minority.

Why did Hinduism never really spread to China, especially when considering the Indian merchants living there?

Because there is nothing in Hinduism that makes it a duty of the followers to spread the religion, unlike with Christianity and Islam, where they are basically ordered to do so.

Same thing with plenty of other ancient religions that existed and faded away without spreading around much.

Rarely will anyone leave their own lifestyle and join another if someone from that other lifestyle is not coercing him/her(or at least convincing).

[Roma_Victrix]

Right, Hinduism isn't a missionary style faith, but despite that a small community of Jews - the Kaifeng Jews - managed to exist in China from the medieval period into the present day. Judaism isn't a missionary faith either. Therefore I find it rather odd that more Hindus aren't around in China today, given the strong historical link between India and China going back to Antiquity (in terms of commercial trade as well as trade in religious ideas). Then again the same can be said for ethnic Persians and Arabs, both of whom existed in medieval China in far greater numbers relatively speaking than today. There are still plenty of Muslims in China, but the vast majority of them are either ethnic Hui (essentially Han Chinese) or Turkic peoples like Uyghurs, who used to be Manichaeists and Buddhists before the conversion to Islam by the end of the 11th century.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

Damn all of the White Lotus/Red Turban groups. They were also a problem in the reign of the Qianlong Emperor. Manicheanism seems to have had an easy enough time hiding amidst Buddhism and all that. I don't think they had very many adherents and these were secret societies for the most part I believe.

My guess is that Hinduism was more easily syncretized with Chinese folk religion, Taoism and Buddhism.

[Roma_Victrix]

You could probably paint many of the Manichaeans that way, but certainly not the Zoroastrians. They were very out in the open in Chinese society. Yet both of these religions built prominent temples out in public. How secretive could they have possibly been with that in mind? The Sogdians certainly weren't shy about practicing their various faiths and had their burial tombs decorated with (Chinese-style) Zoroastrian artwork.

[Roma_Victrix]

I discovered an intriguing fact recently that a wealthy Sogdian man from 13th-century Samarkand (modern-day Uzbekistan) built a series of Nestorian Christian Churches in Zhejiang and Hangzhou, China during the Yuan Dynasty. This is corroborated by both the Venetian explorer Marco Polo and contemporary Chinese records of the 14th century. It's a rather big deal considering how Nestorian Christianity is considered to have died out in Central Asia by the end of the Samanid Empire in 999 AD, and likewise seems to have disappeared from China after the Tang Dynasty collapsed in 907 AD (the Sogdians living in China continued practicing Zoroastrianism and Buddhism, though). The Mongols were known to have revived Nestorian Christianity in China during the Yuan period (Kublai Khan's own mother was a Christian), when Catholocism was first brought to China thanks to the Italian papal missionaries John of Montecorvino and Giovanni de Marignolli (both of whom lived in Dadu, modern Beijing). The Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci discovered in the early 17th century that the Kaifeng Jews had been living in China for centuries and soon after that the Jesuits discovered the old Nestorian Christian tablets, relics, and "Daqin" temple pagoda at Xi'an.

[Abdülmecid I]

In my opinion, the Mongols had a somewhat controversial influence on Chinese Nestorianism. In the short term, they contributed to its revival, many of them being converted to that Christian "heresy", but in the long term, they, in my opinion, rendered its future irrevocably bleak. Nestorianism in China had always been dependent on the Nestorian community of Sogdiana, whose prosperity was essentially a necessary (but, of course, not the only, as the decline of Nestorianism in the 9th century has shown) requirement for the existence of Nestorianism in China. Now, minority religions like Nestorianism find their adherents and generally their most active members almost exclusively in large urban centers, from where long trading caravans spread their beliefs across the West and East. Well, the Mongol campaigns are mostly notorious for their obsession with totally exterminating every city they found in their sanguinary path, especially in what concerns the conquest of Central Asia.
The Nestorian Church never recovered from that destruction of her administrative structure and unprecedented loss of manpower, while the remnants pretty much evaporated during the 14th century, due to the chaos and political disintegration that followed the collapse of the Mongol empire, as well as the appearance of the Black Death. Therefore, when Chinese Nestorianism began to gradually lose its popularity, because of the assimilation of the Mongol upper class to the vastly numerically superior Chinese population, a reemergence of it through China's contacts with Central Asia was practically impossible. Τhe Mongols had (temporarily) saved the branch, but poisoned the root. Perhaps, the same would have happened in Iraq, but there Nestorianism had a much longer and stronger tradition even when compared to that of Sogdiana, also extending to the countryside.

[Roma_Victrix]

That's not just an opinion, Abdulmecid: that's a very well-informed opinion!

To that I would add the fact that the Hongwu Emperor, founder of the Ming Dynasty in 1368, also saw fit to suppress all of these foreign groups and non-Chinese ideologies. Persians and Arabs continued to populate important trade centers like Guangzhou, but the Ming had a rather stunning monolothic landscape compared to the flourishing religious diversity of the Tang, Five Dynasties, Song, and Yuan periods. Well...I suppose the Ming still had a large ethnic Hui Muslim minority. One that carried over into the Qing and modern times, along with the Uyghurs.

[Roma_Victrix]

Dude! I know it's irrelevant to this discussion, but holy cow I just found something awesome! A Zoroastrian priest's head, made of clay and alabaster, from the freaking Greco-Bactrian Kingdom (found in modern-day Tajikistan), dated 3rd to 2nd centuries BC!!!!!!!



This has got to be one of the earliest (existent) realistic depictions of a Zoroastrian priest.

[Roma_Victrix]

Speaking of more irrelevant stuff, Morgan Freeman takes us on a journey through the world of Zoroastrianism....in California:

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

Good watch I guess. Very basic though. Morgan Freeman is a massive dude.

[Roma_Victrix]

Those are my thoughts as well, about the video and Morgan Freeman. I do hate the claim of Zoroastrianism being "3,500 years old". LOL. What? The middle of the Bronze Age? Persia didn't even exist then, unless of course people are trying to claim the ancient Elamites created Zoroastrianism, which would mean it's not an "Iranian" religion at all. Because Iranian peoples (from the later Indo-European migrations) didn't even populate Iran at the time. The Persians didn't even arrive in the territory of modern Iran until about 800 BC, as part of the larger Indo-Iranian migrations.

Besides, there's no textual evidence for Zoroastrianism until about the 5th century BC, thanks to early Greek historiography (i.e. Herodotus). Zoroaster was most likely a contemporary with Persian king Cyrus the Great.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

Since when is Zoroastrianism a monotheistic religion. I seem to recall them having multiple gods whom they probably took from their Mesopotamian neighbors. Cyrus at least seems to have been a polytheist. Darius on the other hand appears to be monotheist, if his inscriptions are any indication. Notice how Cyrus often makes references to Marduk and other gods where as Darius only ever mentions Ahura Mazda. But even then there are other Persian gods who must have been de-legitimized over time but their names escape me at the moment.

[Roma_Victrix]

It may have become more monotheist in nature when officially adopted by the Sassanids as a state religion, who probably looked across the pond and saw how successful Christianity and its one God was in the Eastern Roman Empire (analogous with the one rule of the one emperor of Eastern Rome, both of whom you should abide by or say goodbye to your nuts, pal). Zoroastrianism as practiced in the Parthian period was most certainly polytheistic. The Persians had tons of gods and goddesses. In fact they continued to have various polytheistic cults until they were wiped out by the Arabs, gradually of course. Not all at once with the conquest of the Sasanian Empire in 651. It seems as though each region the Muslims conquered, right away there was a sizeable population of natives clamoring to convert to Islam in order to avoid the stifling jizya tax levied on non-Muslims.

In either case, China, China, China, Oda. Don't forget that this thread is about China, not about Morgan Freeman. Unless of course we're talking about Morgan Freeman in China, like when he was chilling in Hong Kong in the Dark Knight. If that movie had Zoroastrians in it then the astronomical cycle would be complete.

Seems like Zoroastrianism died out in China thanks to simple assimilation too, during the Ming (probably helped that the Ming discouraged foreign religions). However, the Parsis came to China in the 18th century and lived there until the freaking 1940s! With a sizeable Zoroastrian community that was extinguished and exiled by Mao Zedong. Because his Little Red Book was just bigger, badder, and better than their stinky Persian-carpet smelling Avesta.

The Parsis are making a comeback, though! They've been living in China again since the 1980s. Zoroastrian fire temples are now open once again. Somewhere the medieval Sogdians are smiling down on this development, for the eternal flame burns on. Yet the Sogdians didn't start the fire. It had always been burning, since the world has been turning.

[sumskilz]

Notice how Cyrus often makes references to Marduk and other gods

The Book of Isaiah (45:1) says Cyrus is Yahweh's māšîaḥ‎ (Messiah/anointed). I would not be surprised if he made the claim himself as he did on the Cyrus Cylinder regarding Marduk, basically saying "I was sent by your patron god to liberate you". That's a trick he inherited from various Mesopotamian ruler's I assume since there are records of them using similar propaganda, but I don't think it says anything about his own beliefs. Some strands of Judaism started to take on more dualistic leanings during the Achaemenid period, along with other beliefs that have Zoroastrian parallels. This makes me think the Ahura Mazda vs Angra Mainyu dynamic was already part of the religion, but I don't know if there is any direct evidence.

[Gäiten]

Religions have been very dynamic and often huges changes/transformations happened. So it is very likely that Zoroaster never lived but was the incarnation of somewhat godly became human to make the religion more amenable (Great prophets who were in communationw with god have been very amenable).

[Abdülmecid I]

Well, the matter of the Persian institutional religion is a bit obscure, because the various Iranian ruling dynasties intended to create a balance between two opposing religions, Zoroastrianism and Mithraism, which, although it's an over-simplification, were particularly popular among the Persians and Medians respectively (and the people who settled in those two regions, like the Parthian clans of Media). Then, of course, both religions showed some level of flexibility, borrowing elements from each other, the most famous of which probably is the example of the Magii, who, from being the Median tribe charged with religious (Mithraic) duties, eventually evolved into the Zoroastrian clergy.

[Roma_Victrix]

Well, the matter of the Persian institutional religion is a bit obscure, because the various Iranian ruling dynasties intended to create a balance between two opposing religions, Zoroastrianism and Mithraism, which, although it's an over-simplification, were particularly popular among the Persians and Medians respectively (and the people who settled in those two regions, like the Parthian clans of Media). Then, of course, both religions showed some level of flexibility, borrowing elements from each other, the most famous of which probably is the example of the Magii, who, from being the Median tribe charged with religious (Mithraic) duties, eventually evolved into the Zoroastrian clergy.

Those Medians, still making an impact on us to this day.