of Light.  Both looked upon sexual intercourse as among the greatest of evils, though the theory in the two cases was slightly different.  So of the drinking of wine, the eating of animal food, etc.  The final state was conceived of in substantially the same way in the two systems.  Nirvana, the blowing out of man’s life as an individual entity, is quite paralleled by the Manichæan view of the gradual escape of the imprisoned particles of light into the Kingdom of Light.  In both cases the divine pleroma is to be restored in such a way as to destroy indi- vidual consciousness. The Buddhist Bhikkhus(or ascetical monks) correspond very closely with the Manichæan Truthful Ones (Elect), and the relations of these to ordinary adherents of the parties was much the same in the two cases.  Both systems (like Christianity) had the proselyting spirit fully developed.  The position of Mani as a preacher or prophet corresponds with the Buddhist idea of the manifestations of Buddha.  The statement is attributed to Mani that "as Buddha came in the land of India, Zoroaster in the land of Persia, and Jesus in the land of the West, so at last in the epoch of the present this preaching came through me [Mani] in the land of Babylonia."  In the interest of his theory, which makes the old Babylonian re- ligion the chief source of Manichæism, Kessler has attempted to detract from the significance of the Buddhist influence.  Yet he grants that the morality of the Manichæans (including many of the features mentioned above) was Buddhist.  The close connection of the two systems cannot, it would seem, be successfully gainsaid.13 13 Cunningham, St. Austin and his Place in the History of Christian Thought (1886), has these remarks on the relation of Mani to Buddhism:  "Mani was indeed a religious reformer:  deeply impregnated with the belief and practice which Buddhist monks were spreading in the East, he tried with some success to reform the religion of Zoroaster in Persia [i.e. the Persian Empire], his native land.  While his fundamental doctrine, the root of his system, was of Persian origin, and he figured the universe to himself as if it were given over to the unending conflict between the Powers of Light and Darkness, in regard to discipline his system very closely resembles that founded by Buddha; the electof the Manichæans correspond to the Buddhist monks:  the precepts about abstinence from meat and things of sense are, if not borrowed from the rules Gotama gave for the conduct of his followers, the outcome of the same principles about the nature of man."  Harnack, art. Manichæism in Ency. Britannica, follows Kessler in attaching slight importance to the Buddhist influence on Manichæism, preferring, with him, to derive nearly all of the features ascribed by Baur, Neander and others to Buddhist influence, to the old Baby- lonian religion, the precise character of which, in the time of Mani, is imperfectly understood.  Harnack’s (and Kessler’s) statements must therefore be taken with some allowance.  There is no objection, however, to supposing that Mani derived from the old Babylonian party or parties with which he came in contact religious principles which were wrought out in detail under the influence of Buddhism.  This is in fact what probably occurred. 33 The Relation of Manichæism to Buddhism.