With the exception of a few fragments written in a Pehlevi dialect, all this recovered Manichaean literature is in the Ouigour or Vigur dialect of Tatar. The alphabet used is the one adapted by Mani himself from the Syriac estrangelo. The fragments are 800 in number, both on paper and vellum, written and adorned with the pious care and good taste which the Manichaeans are known to have bestowed on their manuscripts. They were brought back by Professor Grünwedel and Dr Huth from Turfan in East Turkestan, and were partly translated by Dr F. W. K. Müller in the _Abhandtungen der k. preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften_ (Berlin, 1904). Much of this literature is still left in Turfan, where the natives use the sheets of Vigur and Chinese vellum MSS. as window-panes in their huts. The Russian and German governments have sent out fresh expeditions to rescue what is left before it is too late. We may thus hope to recover some priceless monuments of early Christianity, hymns and treatises perhaps of Marcion and Bardesanes, the Gospel of Peter, and even the Diatessaron. Müller's translations includes a long extract of Mani's book called _Schapurakan_, parts of his _Evangelium_, and epistles, with liturgies, hymns and prayers, for Tatar Khans who espoused the faith in Khorasan.
_Manichaeism and Christianity._--It is very difficult to determine what was the extent of Mani's knowledge of Christianity, how much he himself borrowed from it, and through what channels it reached him. It is certain that Manichaeism, in those districts where it was brought much into contact with Christianity, became additionally influenced by the latter at a very early period. The Western Manichaeans of the 4th and 5th centuries are much more like Christians than their Eastern brethren. In this respect Manichaeism experienced the same kind of development as Neo-Platonism. As regards Mani himself, it is safest to assume that he held both Judaism and Catholic Christianity to be entirely false religions. It is indeed true that he not only described himself as the promised Paraclete--for this designation probably originated with himself--but also conceded a high place in his system to "Jesus"; we can only conclude from this, however, that he distinguished between Christianity and Christianity. The religion which had proceeded from the historical Jesus he repudiated together with its founder, and Catholicism as well as Judaism he looked upon as a religion of the devil. But he distinguished between the Jesus of darkness and the Jesus of light who had lived and acted contemporaneously with the former. This distinction agrees with that made by the gnostic Basilides no less strikingly than the Manichaean criticism of the Old Testament does with that propounded by the Marcionites (see the _Acta Archelai_, in which Mani is made to utter the antitheses of Marcion). Finally, the Manichaean doctrines exhibit points of similarity to those of the Christian Elkesaites. The historical relation of Mani to Christianity is then as follows. From Catholicism, which he very probably had no detailed knowledge of, he borrowed nothing, rejecting it as devilish error. On the other hand, he looked upon what he considered to be Christianity proper--that is, Christianity as it had been developed among the sects of Basilidians, Marcionites, and perhaps Bardesanites, as a comparatively valuable and sound religion. He took from it the moral teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, and a criticism of the Old Testament and of Judaism so far as he required it. Indications of the influence of Marcionitism are found in the high estimation in which Mani held the apostle Paul, and in the fact that he explicitly rejects the Book of Acts. Mani appears to have given recognition to a portion of the historical matter of the Gospels, and to have interpreted it in accordance with his own doctrine.