II. THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF THE HYMN-CYCLES

Angad Rōšnān begins with a soul in distress, for whom “the hour of life is ended.” Fire and fog daunt it, as do hideous demons, and it beseeches its Saviour for redemption. Life ebbs from its body, and its distress deepens; it no longer invokes the Saviour confidently, but asks in despair, “Who shall save me?” For five cantos—as far as can be judged from the surviving fragments—the soul remains lonely, terrified, and weeping. In the sixth, the Saviour comes with loving words. The demons slink away, and the soul is promised salvation and adjured to be steadfast and happy on “this day of death.” In the last extant verses from the eighth canto, the soul tells how, rescued from all sins and clothed in a garment of Light, it has looked upon the dark prison of the body it has abandoned. Huwīdagmān follows the same pattern closely; the chief difference in its extant verses is that it opens with a canto describing Paradise, which is followed by a canto entitled “The Punishment of Sinners.” The situation at the end of the fourth canto is the one found at the beginning of Angad Rōšnān—namely, a soul distressed by encircling horrors and yearning for a Saviour. Here too, the Saviour appears in the sixth canto and brings the soul comfort and the promise of redemption.

Reitzenstein, influenced by the recurrence of a theme of dissolution, interpreted the hymn-cycles as a death-mass; and his theory receives support from the subsequent discovery of passages in which death is explicitly mentioned. A comparison is therefore necessary between the hymn-cycles and Manichaean funerary literature.

¹⁴ He also used as evidence for this two of the sections in M 4 (see above, p. 2). In rejecting his interpretation, Lentz pointed out that it was natural for the Manichaeans to be concerned with death and the end of the world, both events representing the salvation of Light. Yet, although Mani’s teachings made holy dying the goal of his followers, holy living was an essential preliminary; and many Manichaean texts contain precepts for conducting life well. The hymn-cycles are characterized, however, as Reitzenstein saw, by indifference to life and a sustained preoccupation with death.