PREVIOUS WORK ON THE HYMN-CYCLES

represented by its opening line in the corresponding section of M 4. This was an attractive hypothesis, but one based on wrong assumptions. Angad Rōšnān is the title of the whole work;¹ and the cantos of which it is composed consist of unbroken runs of verses. There is thus no basis for a formal comparison between M 4 and the hymn-cycle.

Reitzenstein suggested that Angad Rōšnān had originally consisted of twelve cantos, corresponding with the twelve hours both of the day on which the cycle was chanted and of a symbolic Day of Light.² Having named M 4 "the abbreviated death-mass" (original: "die abgekürzte Totenmesse"), he called the hymn-cycle correspondingly "the great mystery of salvation" (original: "das grosse Erlösungsmysterium"). He used the term "mystery" in a restricted sense, however, pointing out that in Manichaeism "there is no trace of any cultic action, and the fact that we are not dealing with the sacred account (original: "ἱερὸς λόγος") of an actual mystery should be proven by the large number of copies" (original: "von einer kultischen Handlung findet sich keine Spur, und dass wir es nicht mit dem ἱερὸς λόγος eines wirklichen Mysteriums zu tun haben, sollte schon die grosse Zahl der Exemplare beweisen").³ He made, nevertheless, a close comparison between the hymn-cycles and the funeral liturgies of Gnostic sects. The subject of the Iranian texts he held to be the "death" and salvation of the First Man, symbolizing the death in matter and deliverance of Light and of individual souls. He supposed at first that the deities Friend of the Lights, Xrōštag, and Padwāxtag figured in the surviving verses.⁴ Later, in his book Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen (The Hellenistic Mystery Religions),⁵ he abandoned the details

blank space marking the end of a canto. As he attributed all verses on these fragments to the sixth canto, he supposed this space to show a division within the canto itself. He was also influenced by M 88 II, containing short Evangelionīg (Gospel-related) hymns, which have, however, no connection with the handām (limbs/sections) texts on M 88 I, as he himself later recognized (see his Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen, 3rd ed., p. 277).

¹ This is suggested even by some of the fragments available to Reitzenstein. M 89 bears clearly the title: "Eighth Limb—Angad Rōšnān"; and M 91 and M 774 both have titles to be restored as "Seventh Limb—Angad Rōšnān."
² Erl. Myst., pp. 95-96.
³ Ibid., p. 96.
⁴ The words rwšn’n fry’ng, from which he then argued the presence of Friend of the Lights, are used as a laudatory epithet for any god or angel. The deity himself is called in Parthian fryhrwšn. The presence of the god Padwāxtag was assumed from the letter p which appears sometimes in the margins (see below, p. 24); but this device (for padwāg "answer") probably marks the antiphon, as suggested by Müller.
⁵ 3rd ed. (1927), pp. 53-55. Reitzenstein’s earlier theories were admirably summarized by H. Gressmann in Die orientalischen Religionen im hellenistisch-römischen Zeitalter (The Oriental Religions in the Hellenistic-Roman Age) (1930), pp. 172-5. This book, published posthumously, was completed in 1923. It therefore contains no reference to Reitzenstein’s modification of his theories.