Uygurca Belgelerde Manihaist Mitoloji
Serap AlperGnostik bir öğreti olarak yola çıkmış olan Manihaizm; kendi kuralları ve ritüelleri, kendi cemaati, tapınağı ve sanatını oluşturarak kurumsal bir dine dönüşmüş ve geniş bir yayılım alanı kazanarak yüzyıllar boyunca varlığını sürdürmüş; sonunda yeniden gnostik bir ekol biçimine bürünmüştür. Manihaist inanca göre, insanlar ışıkın karanlıkla karıştığı bir dünyaya hapsedilmişler ve kendilerini karanlıktan kurtarmayı amaçlamaktadırlar. Bu kurtuluşun ilk basamağı, bu maddi dünyanın ötesinde yaşayan Işık Tanrısı’nın bilgisine yani gnosise ulaşmaktır. Bu amaç doğrultusunda önce kendi gerçek tanrısal varlığını tanıması gerektiği bilinciyle insanın kozmogonik nitelikteki sorularını cevaplamaya çalışmışlardır. Bu dünyadaki kötülüğün kaynağını ve doğasını açıklamaya çalışan bir dünya şeması tasarlamışlar; bunu yaparken hem oldukça ayrıntılı hem de bazen Manihaist yazarların kendileri için bile biraz kafa karıştırıcı olan bir kozmogoni yaratmışlardır. Manihaist gnosisin mitlerle düğümlenmesi, sonrasında da öğretinin mitolojisi ve felsefesinin birbirine karıştırılmasıyla Mani dini oldukça karmaşık bir hâl almıştır. Manihaizm’i sadece mitolojisiyle anlamlandırmaya çalışanlar, dinin bu haliyle büyük halk kitlelerine yayılmasını şaşkınlıkla karşılamıştır. Altında yatan mitolojik hikâyeyi bilmeden felsefesini anlamlandırabilmek de mümkün görünmemektedir. Bu çalışma, Manihaist kozmogoni mitini ve felsefesini, mitin anlatıldığı Süryanice, Soğdca, Farsça kaynaklar ışığında aydınlatmayı, Uygurca metinlerin bu hikâyelerin ne kadarını barındırdığını gösterebilmeyi amaçlamaktadır. Bu doğrultuda, Uygur harfli Türkçe metinler bizzat görülmüş olmakla birlikte metinler üzerinde çalışanların bilgisi verilmiş, kabul edilen okuma önerileri metne dahil edilip farklılıklar dipnotta gösterilmiştir. Tahrip olmuş metinler, semantik açıdan bir fayda sağlamadığı için dahil edilmemiştir.
Manichaean Mythology in Uyghur Documents
Serap AlperManichaeism, which began as a Gnostic doctrine, evolved into an institutional religion, creating its own rules and rituals, community, temples, and art, and continued to exist for centuries over a wide area until eventually, it took the form of a Gnostic school once more. According to Manichaean belief, human beings are all imprisoned in a world where light and darkness are mixed and they strive to free themselves from the darkness. The first step in this liberation is to attain the knowledge of the God of Light, who lives beyond this material world. To do this, they tried to answer the cosmogonic questions of mankind knowing that they must first recognize their true divine existence. They designed a world concept that tries to explain the source and nature of evil in this world; in doing so, they created a cosmogony that was both highly detailed and sometimes confusing even for the authors of Manichaeanism themselves. The Manichaean religion became quite complex as the Manichaean gnosis was associated with myths, and the mythology and philosophy of the doctrine were subsequently combined. Those who tried to make sense of Manichaeism in terms of its mythology only were astonished that the religion spread to large masses of people in this form. Without knowing the underlying mythological story, it seems impossible to make sense of its philosophy. This study aims to illuminate the Manichaean cosmogony mythology and philosophy in light of Syriac, Sogdian, and Persian sources wherein the myth is told, and to show how many of these stories are contained in Uyghur texts. On this point, although the Turkish texts in Uyghur script have been examined in person, and the details of those who worked on the texts are given, the accepted reading suggestions are included in the text, and the differences are shown in a footnote. Destroyed texts are not included because they are not semantically useful.
The groundwork for the origins of Manichaeism as a Gnostic doctrine has long been in place, since there was not only an ancient civilization in Mesopotamia but also a wide variety of religious traditions that had developed and converged there over a history of nearly a thousand years. In addition to extensions of the old Babylonian cults that can be traced here and there until the end of the Hellenistic period, there were Iranian religious ideas permeated the chain of Hellenistic civilization after the Persian domination (539 BC) and the reign of Alexander. Furthermore, a strong Judaism emerged in the country during the so-called Babylonian period (597 BC). In the second century, Christianity penetrated from Syria and established centers, especially in the north, such as Edessa and Nisibis (Rudolf, 1984, p. 378-379). Thus, different religious and cultural structures emerged in the same geographical area, on the basis of the traces of Babylonian cults, Hellenistic culture, Judaism, and Christianity. While some of these spread to large masses of people, the influence and spread of others remained limited.
Every religion contains a mythology and a philosophy. For example, in monotheistic religions, just as the mythological story of Adam and Eve tells of the beginning of life on earth as a result of disobedience, the origin of the faith and the philosophy of its rituals are expressed through stories. In the case of a religion separated from us many centuries ago and whose traditions and rituals cannot be identified through participant observation, we need to deal with its mythology and philosophy separately. This distinction will help our understanding of the religion, and in the case of Manichaeism, it will also help us to compare and synthesize those fragments written in different languages and in different centuries. Therefore, if we want to understand the terms in which Manichaean philosophy is expressed, we must first familiarize ourselves with Manichaean mythology.
We refer to Sundermann for the most significant sources of Manichaean cosmogony, namely, Epistula Fundamenti, Persian Shabuhragan, the Greek works of Alexander of Lycopolis, Hegemonius’ Acta Archelai, the book quoted by Theodoros bar Konai, the late Zoroastrian Shkand-gumanic Vichar, Al-Nedim’s Fihrist, Biruni’s Asar al-Baqiya, and Shahristani (Sundermann 1992). Henning lists the Epistula Fundamenti, the Middle Persian fragment M 98–99, the Middle Persian book T III D 260, the Uyghur fragment T II D 173, Theodoros bar Konai’s book, the source used by Al-Nedim, and a Sogdian fragment discussed in his paper (Henning, 1948, p. 306). Some Uyghur texts echo Mani’s account of the creation of the world, but only a few fragments could be linked to their Iranian counterparts.
Clark identified 17 Turkish texts as cosmogonic; three texts are eschatological, two of which are related to the Mitri Burkan, and a few of them have parallels with the Persian Shabuhragan (Clark, 1997, p. 94). Unlike other texts, it would be incorrect to say that these sources, which constitute the substance of the Manichaean mythological story, bear witness to a regional adaptation of Manichaeism or its evolution. This is because these stories are not the product of a particular cultural milieu and literary tradition, but are common to all texts as a narrative of origin. The answer to the question of how much and in what form the Turkish texts in our possession contain this story will bear witness to the change and development of Manichaeism from its emergence to its acceptance as an official religion by the Uyghur Turks in the eighth century.
Manichaeism is a Gnostic religion, even though it has become an institutional religion with its own rules and rituals, community, temple, and art, and has survived for centuries by becoming widespread. In Manichaeism, whose cosmogony we have sought to reveal with Syriac, Persian, Sogdian, Arabic, and Turkish sources, God is not the creator God. Creation is the work of demonic forces. The cosmos is a demonic copy of a superior world. The creation of the world was not the result of God’s omnipotence, but rather, of Darkness attacking Light. The sole purpose of mankind, that came into existence by mixing with demonic elements, is to save the divine particle within him.
In Manichaeism and other Gnostic religions, these aspects are mentioned in separate studies. In this study, we tried to find the Manichaean cosmogony myth reflected in Uyghur texts, starting from the teaching of “iki yıltız üç üdkü nom,” (Two Principles and the Three Epoches) which is the first step of entering the religion, and it was possible to see that, despite the temporal and cultural changes in Manichaean rituals, the cosmogony myth remained unchanged except for discursive differences.
The Uyghur texts have been included and retranslated into Turkish, taking into account all reading suggestions.
