A Manichaean parable on the Sinfulness of Mourning

This paper is a comparative study of two Manichaean texts in Middle Persian and Parthian languages. The Middle Persian text is a parable on the sinfulness of mourning and the harm it will inflict on the soul of the recently deceased. The Parthian one is about an incident in one of Mani's travels. The latter, which has been categorized as an historical text, somehow corresponds to the Middle Persian one in that the same characters seem to be involved in both. In fact, these two texts complete one another. In this article, along with a linguistic study of the texts, the cultural roots of the "sin of wailing" in the Manichaean religion are examined as well.