The Manichaeans, worshippers of the Chaldaean Mani or Man[=e]s, who died about A.D. 274, appear to have found their way to China in the year 694. In 719 an envoy from Tokharestan reached Ch'ang-an, bringing a letter to the emperor, in which a request was made that an astronomer who accompanied the mission might be permitted to establish places of worship for persons of the Manichaean faith. Subsequently, a number of such chapels were opened at various centres; but little is known of the history of this religion, which is often confounded by Chinese writers with Mazdeism, the fate of which it seems to have shared, also disappearing about the middle of the 9th century.
By "the sect of those who take out the sinew," the Chinese refer to the Jews and their peculiar method of preparing meat in order to make it _kosher_. Wild stories have been told of their arrival in China seven centuries before the Christian era, after one of the numerous upheavals mentioned in the Old Testament; and again, of their having carried the Pentateuch to China shortly after the Babylonish captivity, and having founded a colony in Ho-nan in A.D. 72. The Jews really reached China for the first time in the year A.D. 1163, and were permitted to open a synagogue at the modern K'ai-fêng Fu in 1164. There they seem to have lived peaceably, enjoying the protection of the authorities and making some slight efforts to spread their tenets. There their descendants were found, a dwindling community, by the Jesuit Fathers of the 17th century; and there again they were visited in 1850 by a Protestant mission, which succeeded in obtaining from them Hebrew rolls of parts of the Pentateuch in the square character, with vowel points. After this, it was generally believed that the few remaining stragglers, who seemed to be entirely ignorant of everything connected with their faith, had become merged in the ordinary population. A recent traveller, however, asserts that in 1909 he found at K'ai-fêng Fu a Jewish community, the members of which keep as much as possible to themselves, worshipping in secret, and preserving their ancient ritual and formulary.
See H. Hackmann, _Buddhism as a Religion_ (1910); H.A. Giles, _Religions of Ancient China_ (1905); G. Smith, _The Jews at K'ae-fung-foo_ (1851); Dabry de Thiersant, _Le Mahométisme en Chine_ (1878); P. Havret. S.J., _La Stèle chrétienne de Si-ngan-fou_ (1895). (H. A. GI.)