BuddhistRoad Paper 3.3 "Buddha and Śākyamuni in Chinese Manichaean Scriptures"

During his missionary journeys beginning around ca. 240, Mani (ca. 216–276/277), the founder of Manichaeism, visited regions where Buddhism had already been present, and thus he may have become familiar with certain Buddhist concepts. Mani’s disciple, Mār Ammō (fl. 3rd c.) and subsequent generations of missionaries in Central Asia and China sought to accommodate the Manichaean message to the local Buddhist environment. This feature, to varying extent, characterised Parthian, Sogdian, Uyghur, and Chinese texts. In this paper, I focus on two fundamental terms, buddha and Śākyamuni, to show how they are used in early and later Manichaean sources.