Manichaean writings indicate that Mani received revelations when he was twelve years old and again when he was 24, and over this period, he grew dissatisfied with the Elcesaites, the Jewish Christian Gnostic sect he was born into.

[30] Fynes (1996) argues that various Jain influences, particularly ideas on the existence of plant souls, were transmitted from Western Kshatrapa territories to Mesopotamia and then integrated into Manichaean beliefs.

[31] Mani wore colorful clothing abnormal for the time that reminded some Romans of a stereotypical Persian magus or warlord, earning him ire from the Greco-Roman world because of it.

[citation needed] According to biographies preserved by ibn al-Nadim and the Persian polymath al-Biruni, Mani received a revelation as a youth from a spirit, whom he would later call his "Twin" (Imperial Aramaic: תאומא tɑʔwmɑ, from which is also derived the Greek name of Thomas the Apostle, Didymus; the "twin"), Syzygos (Koinē Greek: σύζυγος "spouse, partner", in the Cologne Mani-Codex), "Double," "Protective Angel," or "Divine Self."

[36] Manichaean tradition is also noted to have claimed that Mani was the reincarnation of religious figures from previous eras such as the Buddha, Krishna, and Zoroaster in addition to Jesus himself.

Academics note that much of what is known about Manichaeism comes from later 10th- and 11th-century Muslim historians like al-Biruni and ibn al-Nadim in his al-Fihrist; the latter "ascribed to Mani the claim to be the Seal of the Prophets.

"[37] However, given the Islamic milieu of Arabia and Persia at the time, it stands to reason that Manichaens would regularly assert in their evangelism that Mani, not Muhammad, was the "Seal of the Prophets".

Henning wrote in his analysis of them: It is noteworthy that Mani, who was brought up and spent most of his life in a province of the Persian empire, and whose mother belonged to a famous Parthian family, did not make any use of the Iranian mythological tradition.

There can no longer be any doubt that the Iranian names of Sām, Narīmān, etc., that appear in the Persian and Sogdian versions of the Book of the Giants, did not figure in the original edition, written by Mani in the Syriac language.

[45] In the Aramaic Book of Enoch, the Qumran writings, overall, and in the original Syriac section of Manichaean scriptures quoted by Theodore bar Konai,[46] he is called malkā rabbā d-iqārā ("the Great King of Honor").

[49] However, the central object of veneration in Pure Land Buddhism, Amitābha, the Buddha of Infinite Light, does not appear in Chinese Manichaeism and seems to have been replaced by another deity.

They have sprung forth very recently like new and unexpected monstrosities among the race of the Persians – a nation still hostile to us – and have made their way into our empire, where they are committing many outrages, disturbing the tranquility of our people and even inflicting grave damage to the civic communities.

We have cause to fear that with the passage of time they will endeavour, as usually happens, to infect the modest and tranquil of an innocent nature with the damnable customs and perverse laws of the Persians as with the poison of a malignant (serpent) ... We order that the authors and leaders of these sects be subjected to severe punishment, and, together with their abominable writings, burnt in the flames.

And if those who have gone over to that hitherto unheard-of, scandalous and wholly infamous creed, or to that of the Persians, are persons who hold public office, or are of any rank or of superior social status, you will see to it that their estates are confiscated and the offenders sent to the (quarry) at Phaeno or the mines at Proconnesus.

[67] The nomadic Uyghur Khaganate lasted for less than a century (744–840) in the southern Siberian steppe, with the fortified city of Ordu-Baliq on the Upper Orkhon River as its capital.

[68] The conversion to Manichaeism led to an explosion of manuscript production in the Tarim Basin and Gansu (the region between the Tibetan and the Huangtu plateaus), which lasted well into the early 11th century.

[71] Under the eighth-century Abbasid Caliphate, Arabic zindīq and the adjectival term zandaqa could denote many different things, but it seems to have primarily—or at least initially—signified a follower of Manichaeism; however its true meaning is not known.

[81]Manichaeism claimed to present the complete version of teachings that were corrupted and misinterpreted by the followers of Mani's predecessors Adam, Abraham, Noah,[9] Zoroaster, the Buddha, and Jesus.

He appointed a "master of the heretics" (Arabic: صاحب الزنادقة ṣāhib al-zanādiqa), an official whose task was to pursue and investigate suspected dualists, who the Caliph then examined.

In the sixth century, many Manichaeans saw "the earth" as "a rectangular parallelepiped enclosed by walls of crystal, above which three [sky] domes" existed, with the other two being above and larger than the first one and second one, respectively.

[116] According to the writings of Augustine of Hippo, ten prayers were performed, the first devoted to the Father of Greatness, and the following to lesser deities, spirits, and angels and finally towards the elect, to be freed from rebirth and pain and to attain peace in the realm of light.

A long quotation, preserved by the eighth-century Nestorian Christian author Theodore Bar Konai,[46] shows that in the original Syriac Aramaic writings of Mani there was no influence of Iranian or Zoroastrian terms.

The adaptation of Manichaeism to the Zoroastrian religion appears to have begun in Mani's lifetime however, with his writing of the Middle Persian Shabuhragan, his book dedicated to the Sasanian emperor, Shapur I.

This was a Greek anti-Manichaean work written before 348, most well known in its Latin version, which was regarded as an accurate account of Manichaeism until refuted by Isaac de Beausobre in the 18th century: In the time of the Apostles there lived a man named Scythianus, who is described as coming "from Scythia", and also as being "a Saracen by race" ("ex genere Saracenorum").

After a while he died, in consequence of a fall from the roof of a house, and the books that he had inherited from Scythianus became the property of the old woman, who, on her death, bequeathed them to a young man named Corbicius, who had been her slave.

While most of the writings they uncovered were in very poor condition, there were still hundreds of pages of Manichaean scriptures, written in three Iranian languages (Middle Persian, Parthian, and Sogdian) and old Uyghur.

These writings were taken back to Germany and were analyzed and published at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, by Le Coq and others, such as Friedrich W. K. Müller and Walter Bruno Henning.

[citation needed] Perhaps the most comprehensive of these publications was Manichaeische Dogmatik aus chinesischen und iranischen Texten (Manichaean Dogma from Chinese and Iranian texts), by Ernst Waldschmidt and Wolfgang Lentz, published in Berlin in 1933.

Though these were also damaged, hundreds of complete pages survived and, beginning in 1933, were analyzed and published in Berlin before World War II, by German scholars such as Hans Jakob Polotsky.

Before explaining the word to his son, the protagonist mentions Joseph Conrad's short story "The Secret Sharer" at least twice in the book, the plot of which also examines the idea of the duality of good and evil.