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296
SHẦYAST LÂ-SHAYAST.
7. Of a pure law (dad) are we of the good religion, and we are of the primitive faith; of a mixed law are those of the Sinik congregation ; of a vile
" It is not easy to identify this Sînîk vaskardih, but Professor J. Darmesteter suggests that the term may have been applied to the Manicheans settled in eastern Turkistan and western China, whence they may have been called Sînîk (the country of the Sêni, Av. Saini, being identified with Kinîstan or China in Bund. XV, 29, because TSîn is the Arabic name of the latter). This is confirmed, to some extent, by a passage in the Dînkard (see Dastür Péshôtan's edition of the Pahlavi text, p. 27), where three foreign religions are mentioned, that of the Jews from Arům, that of the Messiah from the west, and that of Manih from Turkistân. Darmesteter further points out the following passages in Barbier de Meynard's French translation of Mas'aâdî, which show that the Manicheans had considerable influence in eastern Turkistán as late as A. D. 944:
(Meynard, I, 268): '... the Turks, the Khuzlug, and the Taghazghaz, who occupy the town of Kasân, situated between Khurâsân and China, and who are now (A.D. 944) the most valiant, most powerful, and best governed of all the Turkish races and tribes. Their kings bear the title of frkhân ("sub-khân?"), and they alone, among all these nations, profess the religion of Mânî.'
Again, after stating that the Chinese were at first Samanians (Buddhists), it is added (Meynard, II, 258): Their kingdom is contiguous to that of the Taghazghaz, who, as we have said above, are Manicheans, and proclaim the simultaneous existence of the two principles of light and darkness. These people were living in simplicity, and in a faith like that of the Turkish races, when there turned up among them a demon of the dualist sect, who showed them, in tempting language, two opposing principles in everything that exists in the world, such as life and death, health and sickness, riches and poverty, light and darkness, union and separation, connection and severance, rising and setting, existence and non-existence, night and day, &c. Then, he spoke to them of the various ailments which afflict rational beings, animals, children, idiots, and madmen; and he added that God could not be responsible for this evil, which was in distressing contradiction to the excellence which distinguishes his works, and that he was
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