chapter 39 Christian and Manichaean Remains from Quanzhou

Review of Samuel N.C. Lieu, Lance Eccles, Majella Franzmann, Iain Gardner and Ken Parry, Medieval Christian and Manichaean Remains from Quanzhou (Zayton) (Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum, Series Archaeologica et Icono- graphica 2), Turnhout: Brepols 2012, X + 283 pp.*

This new volume in the steadily ongoing CFM-series contains the final reports and a number of related studies by an Australian research team on the Chris- tian (both Church of the East and Catholic) and Manichaean remains, mainly from the Mongol period in Quanzhou and Jinjiang in the Fujian Province of the Republic of China. To a certain extent the book is a continuation of Lieu’s arti- cle ‘Nestorians and Manichaeans on the South China Coast’, which was first published in this journal (VC 1980, 71–88), and later republished in a some- what revised and expanded version in Lieu’s Manichaeism in Central Asia and China (Leiden-Boston-Köln 1998, 177–195). At the centre of this pioneering arti- cle were the Manichaean shrine in Quanzhou as well as Marco Polo’s report of his encounter with a Christian sect estimated by him to consist of 700,000 fam- ilies. Most scholars opine this was a secretive group of Manichaeans. Both Polo’s story and the still existing Manichaean temple remain impor- tant subjects in the present book, while it also contains much more. After his brief introductory essay on present-day Quanzhou (Zayton/Zaitun) and early accounts of its Western visitors (the Polo’s, the Arab travel-writer Ibn Battuta, and the Franciscan John of Montecorvino, among others), Lieu con- tinues with a chapter on the Chinese scholar Wu Wenliang (1903–1969) and his pivotal role in the discovery and conservation of Quanzhou’s Christian and Manichaean remains. After that follows Lieu’s contribution ‘The Church of the East in Quanzhou’, a rather extensive chapter on the (still often, but mistak- enly) socalled ‘Nestorians’ there, being in actual fact an outline of the history of Church of the East in Sassanian Iran and Central China, its survival in later (mainly medieval) times under the Song and the Mongols, and its eventual

* First published in Vigiliae Christianae. A Review of Early Christian Life and Language 68 (2014) 334–337.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004417595_040 christian and manichaean remains from quanzhou 495 demise. In an appendix Lieu once again (but here rather lengthily) discusses Marco Polo’s account on the ‘Christians’ of Fugiu (Fuzhou). The next chapter, by Iain Gardner, competently and clearly deals with ‘The Franciscan Mission to China and the Catholic Diocese of Zayton’ (53–60). The following exposé, again by Lieu, is entitled ‘Manichaean Remains in Jinjiang’ and focuses on the Manichaean shrine on Huabaio hill in the Jinjiang county.1 This shrine in all probability dates back to the year 1148 and contains, carved into the granite back wall, a statue of Mani. Here local worshippers still vener- ate Mani as the Buddha of Light. Some recent sources, however, make mention of other Manichaean shrines in the same Fujian province and one would have read Lieu’s expert opinion on these locations.2 A major new part of the book starts with chapter 6: ‘Catalogue of Christian and Manichaean Remains from Zayton (Quanzhou, China)’.3 The overview is compiled by Gardner, Lieu and Ken Parry. It consists of two parts (I. Chris- tian Remains; II. Manichaean Remains) and is based upon an earlier Chinese catalogue of Wu Wenliang (Bejing 1947; revised and expanded by his son Wu Youxiong, Bejing 2005). All descriptions are accompanied by (full colour or b/w) photographs, several of them made by the Australian team. This essen- tial part of the book (pp. 83–128) is followed by two chapters in which the inscriptions on the listed artefacts (and some others!) are translated and com- mented on, i.e. ch. 7 ‘Inscriptions in Latin, Chinese, Uighur and Phagspa’ by Lance Eccles and Lieu (129–149) and ch. 9 ‘Nestorian Inscriptions in Syro-Turkic from Quanzhou: (II) Texts and Translations’ by Majella Franzmann and Lieu (171–214). As indicated in its subtitle, the interposed ch. 8 ‘Inscriptions in Syro-

1 It is not always clear from the text whether or not the shrine is situated in the prefecture of Quanzhou. On p. 65 it first runs: ‘Almost all Manichaean remains from the Quanzhou region, with the noted exception of a Church of the East inscription from Jintoupu which mentions both members of the Church of the East and Manichaeans (v. infra Catalogue B37 = Z44r), come from the County of Jinjiang and not from the prefecture of Quanzhou’. But a few lines later, in a translated quote from a writing of Paul Pelliot, it is said: ‘The Huabiao Hill of the County of Jinjiang prefecture of Quanzhou …’. What is clear from the several accounts in this book and elsewhere is that the shrine on Huabiao Hill is ca. 27km SW from Quanzhou. 2 In a footnote (73 n. 34) Lieu only refers to R. Kauz, ‘Der “Mo-ni-gong”—ein zweiter erhaltener manichäischer Tempel in Fujian?’, in: Ronald E. Emmerick a.o. (eds.), Studia Manichaica. IV. Internationaler Kongreß zum Manichäismus, Berlin, 14.–18. Juli 1997, Berlin: Akademie Verlag 2000, 334–341 and B. Stöcker-Parnian, ‘Ein manichäischer Fund an der Südostküste Chi- nas’, China-Blätter 19 (1991) 211–221. Ralph Kauz (337) makes mention of a number of other Manichaean temples in the region which sparks questions such as ‘Do they still exist? Are they still places of (Buddhist) worship?’ 3 I follow the wording as given in the table of Contents. The actual chapter title on p. 83 runs ‘Catalogue to the Christian and Manichaean Remains from Zayton (Quanzhou, China)’.