The second volume of the research collection East Manichaean Texts, titled A Collection of Manichaean Legal Texts, was published in 2024 by the Ancient Iran and India Research Foundation in Cambridge, England.

This valuable work is part of the extensive Manichaean Texts Database project, which aims to collect, edit, and translate scattered Manichaean texts in various languages, making them accessible to the global academic community.

For the first time, this volume brings together a collection of important sources on the life of Mani, the Iranian prophet and founder of Manichaeism, as well as the history of this religion’s spread in Eastern lands. The texts used in this volume are in Arabic, Middle Persian, Old Turkic, and Chinese. They include fragments of important works such as the Living Gospel, From the Manichaean Canon, the Book of Mysteries, the Treasury of Life, the Letters and Manichaean Psalms, the Ardahang, and the List of Companions.

The editing and translation of this volume were carried out by a group of researchers including Walter Henning, Enrico Morano, Mohammad Shokri Foumeshi, Nicholas Sims-Williams, Prods Oktor Skjærvø, and Werner Sundermann. Additionally, Samuel N. C. Lieu was responsible for the compilation, final editing, and a portion of the translations, with the collaboration of Camilla Ferrar.

The series has so far included several volumes, each focusing on a specific part of the Manichaean sources. The first volume, titled Texts on the Life of Mani and on the History of Manichaeism in the East, and the third volume, titled Šābuhragān and Šābuhragān-related Texts, have also been published. These two volumes, along with the other volumes in the series, provide a scholarly foundation for rethinking the place of Mani and his religion in the history of religions in Iran and Eastern lands.