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The Manichaean clergy among the Uyghurs lived by strict rules of food.[1] The Xin Tang Shu, describing the Manichaeans who came to the Tang court with the Uyghur envoys in 807, says that by their law they ate only late in the day. They drank water, ate strong-tasting vegetables and refused milk.[2] The Karabalghasun inscription, set up at the Uyghur capital on the Orkhon, praises the new faith for turning a country of slaughter into a country that exhorts to the good.[3] Both rules stood against the food of the steppe, where the herds gave meat and milk.

The conversion

Bögü Khan met followers of Manichaeism in 762 and 763 at Luoyang, where he had come to help the Tang against the rebels. He became a convert.[4] The Chinese face of the Karabalghasun inscription describes the conversion as the Uyghur court remembered it.[5] The khan halted his army at the Eastern Capital, Luoyang, and observed the customs there.[5] Then he took four monks, Ruixi among them, into his realm to preach.[5] The governors and the ministers repented their former errors and asked to serve the true teaching.[5] All carved and painted images of demons were to be burned. The teaching of light was received.[6]

The inscription then describes the change in two parallel phrases.[7] A country of slaughter, 宰殺邦家, became a country that exhorts to the good.[3] The phrase before it says that a people of strange customs became a land of some kind of meal, 飯.[3] In the copy of the stone published in 1895 the character that named the meal is lost. The character that described the old customs is lost as well.[8] The word for slaughter means the killing of animals for meat. Therefore both phrases speak of food. One translation renders the first phrase as a people that once ate meat and will now eat rice. It renders the second as a land where killing was common and the good will now be urged.[9]

An Old Turkic text from Turfan says that the khan divided his people into groups of ten. Each group stood under a man who answered for the faith of the other nine.[4]

The Manichaeans of 807

At the beginning of the Yuanhe era the Uyghur envoys came to court again, and for the first time Manichaeans came with them.[1] The annals of the Jiu Tang Shu date the embassy to February 807 and record that the Uyghurs then asked to build temples at Luoyang and Taiyuan. The request was granted.[10] The Xin Tang Shu sets out the law of these Manichaeans in four clauses. They ate late in the day, drank water, ate strong-tasting vegetables and refused milk, 湩酪.[2] The khan, it adds, always shared the rule of the state with them.[1] They came to the capital every year and went to and fro in the Western Market, where the merchants did much unlawful business with them.[2]

Except for its first two sentences, the passage follows the Tang guoshi bu. This is a collection of notes on the Tang written about 825, which the compilers of the older Jiu Tang Shu did not have.[11] The description of the diet therefore goes back to a Chinese writer of about 825.

The Tang court knew their standing among the Uyghurs. At the end of 813 it gave a banquet for eight Uyghur Manichaeans on their way home and sent them to the chief ministers.[12] The Uyghurs had asked for a Tang princess. The Manichaeans were held in reverence by the Uyghurs. Therefore the ministers were to explain to them why the marriage could not be granted.[12]

Milk and kumys

The two characters 湩酪 have been translated in different ways.[11] One translation renders them as milk and butter. It adds that 酪 could also mean fermented milk.[11] A second renders them as kumys, fermented mare’s milk.[11] A third holds kumys to be the most likely meaning, because the drink has always been consumed in Mongolia. It notes that 湩 can mean mare’s milk.[11] The first translation allows this rendering as possible.[11]

The Xin Tang Shu uses the same word 湩 for the year 647, in its account of the Uyghur and other Tiele chiefs at the court of the emperor Taizong.[1] After the banquet of 647 they asked for a road through their lands. The post stations on it were stocked with horses, milk and meat for the Tang envoys.[1] Milk was what the stations of that road gave to travellers. It was also what the Manichaeans refused.

Clergy and people

The Manichaean church was led by its clergy, the elect, from whom celibacy and fasting were required.[4] The lay hearers were allowed to marry and to eat normally. They were expected to live sparingly and to give alms.[13] The law in the Xin Tang Shu is that of the Manichaeans who travelled with the envoys. They were clergy. The inscription, by contrast, speaks of the whole country. Neither says how the herders of the steppe ate after the conversion.[14] A later survey finds it most unlikely that the ban on eating meat in the edict of 763 was widely obeyed. It thinks the ban may have been meant for the elect alone.[15] A different argument finds it unlikely that the faith reached the Uyghur masses beyond the khan, his court and a small educated circle, since its asceticism did not suit a wandering life.[16] The strong vegetables are taken to be onions and related bulbs, which the clergy are known to have eaten. Kumys stayed popular with everyone but the elect.[15]

Under the khans of the early ninth century the clergy remained very influential. The court, for all the self-denial their faith taught, grew more and more given to luxury.[17] After the khaganate had fallen, the Tang officials gathered the books and images of the Manichaeans. They burned them in the streets and took their property for the state.[1] The food rules of the Uyghur Manichaeans are known from two texts, a eulogy on the stone of their capital and a Chinese note of the 820s.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  2. ^ a b c Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217; Mackerras 1972, p. 109
  3. ^ a b c Karabalghasun inscription; Radloff 1894–1895, parts 1–3, pl. facing p. 290; p. 288
  4. ^ a b c Mackerras 1972, p. 9
  5. ^ a b c d Karabalghasun inscription; Radloff 1894–1895, parts 1–3, pl. facing p. 290; p. 287
  6. ^ Karabalghasun inscription; Radloff 1894–1895, parts 1–3, pl. facing p. 290; pp. 287–288
  7. ^ Karabalghasun inscription; Radloff 1894–1895, parts 1–3, pl. facing p. 290
  8. ^ Radloff 1894–1895, parts 1–3, pl. facing p. 290
  9. ^ Barthold 2004, p. 48
  10. ^ Mackerras 1972, p. 168
  11. ^ a b c d e f Mackerras 1972, p. 169
  12. ^ a b Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195
  13. ^ Mackerras 1972, p. 9–10
  14. ^ Karabalghasun inscription; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  15. ^ a b Sinor 1990, p. 336–337
  16. ^ Ögel 1984, p. 350
  17. ^ Mackerras 1972, p. 12

Sources

Literature

  • Colin Mackerras, The Uighur Empire According to the T'ang Dynastic Histories (1972)
  • Wilhelm Radloff, Die alttürkischen Inschriften der Mongolei (1894–1895, parts 1–3)
  • Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)
  • V. V. Barthold, Orta Asya Türk Tarihi Dersleri (Orta Asya Türk Tarihi Hakkında Dersler) (2004)
  • Bahaeddin Ögel, İslâmiyetten Önce Türk Kültür Tarihi. Orta Asya Kaynak ve Buluntularına Göre (1984)

Related

What links here3

Persons
Bögü Khan
Institutions and Titles
Uyghur Farming
Religions
Manichaeism

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Manichaean Diet of the Uyghurs.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/religions/manichaean-diet-of-the-uyghurs/

Last revised: 8 November 2026