Manichaean Scriptures

The scriptures of Manichaeism, the dualist religion founded by the third century Mesopotamian prophet Mani, which spread from the Roman Empire to China before its eventual suppression and near-total loss of an independent following. Mani himself wrote much of the core canon, including the Shabuhragan dedicated to the Sasanian king Shapur I, while later followers compiled expansions such as the Kephalaia, a Coptic record of Mani's teaching organized as discourses answering his disciples' questions. Surviving Manichaean scripture is fragmentary, recovered mainly from Coptic, Middle Persian, Parthian, Chinese and Central Asian manuscript finds rather than from any single continuous transmission.