III. THE GOAL OF THE DEPARTED SPIRIT AND THE IDENTITY OF THE SAVIOUR

As funeral texts, the hymn-cycles are concerned with the fate of the righteous dead; and if they were wholly preserved, they would doubtless furnish a full exposition of Manichaean doctrine on it. Even as they are, they provide some useful evidence for an obscure point: the immediate goal of the departed spirit. This is a matter which has created some conflict of opinion among scholars. Jackson in his monograph on the fate of the soul1 assumed—ignoring any other possibility—that the soul went straight to the Eternal Paradise; and to this Waldschmidt and Lentz gave their considered assent:

The "eternal realm of Light" is the goal of individual salvation. In contrast to this stands the "new realm of Light"... This is a dwelling-place of the cosmogonical gods.original: "Das ‘ewige Lichtreich’ ist das Ziel der individuellen Erlösung. Im Gegensatz dazu steht das ‘neue Lichtreich’. . . . Dies ist ein Wohnsitz der kosmogonischen Götter."2

Polotsky, however, stated that the soul went after death to the New Paradise.3 That the matter was one of some complexity even for Manichaeans is shown by a question about it which survives in a Sogdian fragment.4 This runs as follows:

[The seventy-first] question thus: "When a second time they will have been created afresh in perfection by the Great King, then in which land will their kingship secondly be? Will it be in the Real Paradise together with the Great King, or in the New Paradise?"

Unfortunately, only the preliminaries of the answer survive; and the problem has therefore to be decided on other evidence.

The New Paradise, created by the Great Builder,5 was made

1. A. V. W. Jackson, ‘A Sketch of the Manichaean Doctrine concerning the Future Life’, JAOS., vol. l, No. 3, pp. 177-98.
2. W.-L. ii, p. 530 n. to 147 d.
3. Abriss, p. 261.
4. M 591. I owe this reference to the kindness of Dr. Gershevitch. For the reading and translation given here I am indebted to Prof. Henning.
5. See Mir. Man. i, pp. 184-5, and p. 184, n. 1 with references.