INTRODUCTION

of this mythological interpretation, but maintained the essentials of his theory.

Reitzenstein had serious handicaps in his study of the handām texts. Knowledge of the Parthian and Middle Persian material was then still very limited, even among Iranists; and he himself was not a specialist in this field.1 Nevertheless, his contributions to the subject were of great value. He was the first to emphasize the importance of the texts, justly remarking that the number of surviving fragments alone shows that "it is a core point of the Manichaean religion" (original: "es sich um einen Kernpunkt der manichäischen Religion handelt");2 he realized that the surviving verses represent what must once have been an elaborate work on a grand scale;3 and he put forward a theory of the nature of that work which, however wrong in detail, is probably in the main not far from the truth.

Five years after Das iranische Erlösungsmysterium (The Iranian Mystery of Salvation) had appeared, E. Waldschmidt and W. Lentz published in collaboration Die Stellung Jesu im Manichäismus (The Position of Jesus in Manichaeism),4 a study of the part played by the redeeming deity Jesus in Manichaeism. Lentz, who was responsible for the Iranian part of this work, supposed the Saviour of the handām hymns to be Jesus.5 He therefore discussed the hymn-cycles at some length, and also published the text, with translation, of several handām fragments. This was the first publication of any considerable amount of text.

The fragments published by Lentz were T II D 178 I–IV and M 855. The former group was known to Reitzenstein, and had been assigned tentatively by him to a second canto. Lentz was able to advance the study of the handām texts considerably by connecting T II D 178 I with a Sogdian colophon, and showing thereby that the fragment belongs in fact to a fifth canto. The colophon in question occurs in a manuscript represented by fragments with the signatures T II K 178, T II D II 170, T II D 185, and T II K. This manuscript appears to have been a hymn-book of considerable size, containing several lengthy works in Sogdian translation. The extant titles and colophons show that in addition to

1 For Reitzenstein’s own remarks on the limitations both of his technical equipment and of the Iranian material available to him, see his later work, Die Vorgeschichte der christlichen Taufe (The Prehistory of Christian Baptism), p. 98 and n. 2.
2 Erl. Myst., p. 19.
3 Ibid., p. 26.
4 Abh. P.A.W., 1926 (= W.-L. i.).
5 Lentz based this suggestion partly on the evidence of M 88 II, which he believed to contain verses from a handām text; but see above, p. 2 n. 8.