ABSTRACT
It is evident from the preserved Manichaean texts in Chinese that Manichaean missionaries to China emphasized and based their mission on their universalist prophetological doctrine that Mani and the Buddha Sakyamuni were both Light-envoys who had brought the truth to humankind. As the Traite and other Chinese texts clearly demonstrate, the Manichaean Elect mastered techniques of accommodation: like Mani they skillfully taught "according to the circumstances." Individual awakening and salvation, the essentiality of complete knowledge for emancipation and return to the Realm of Light, etc., are recurrent themes in the Manichaean Hymnscroll. The understanding of the Manichaeans seemed to have shared, to a great extent, with the Buddhists, and their Chinese audiences would have seen Manichaean soteriology as closely akin to Buddhist. It is possible that the human soul already from the beginning of an individual's life possessed its own five limbs, thought and the other mental faculties.
