Bilawhar Wa-Yūdāsaf( Arabic work on Buddha)
heroes of the Kitāb Bilawhar wa-Yūdāsaf ( Būd̲h̲āsaf ), an Arabic work deriving ultimately from the traditional biography of Gautama Buddha, and subsequently providing the prototype for the Christian legend of Barlaam and Josaphat.
Contents of story. To the long childless king Janaysar, a pagan ruler of Sūlābaṭ (i.e., Kapilavastu) in India, a son is born by miraculous means. The king names him Yūdāsaf (better: Būd̲h̲āsaf = Bodhisattva). An astrologer predicts that the prince’s greatness will not be of this world; the king therefore confines the child in a city set apart, to keep him from knowledge of human misery. Growing up, Yūdāsaf frets at his confinement and insists on being allowed out. Riding forth, he sees two infirm men and later, a decrepit old man, and learns of human frailty and death. The holy hermit Bilawhar of Sarandīb (Ceylon) then appears in disguise and preaches to Yūdāsaf in parables, convincing him of the vanity of human existence and the superiority of the ascetic way. Bilawhar spurns renown and riches, indulgence in food and drink, sexual pleasure and all fleshly delights; a vague theism coupled with belief in immortality is preached, but no specifically Islamic dogma advanced.
King Janaysar is hostile to Bilawhar and opposes Yūdāsaf s conversion. In spite of the efforts of the astrologer Rākis and the pagan ascetic al-Bahwan, Janaysar is overcome in a mock debate on the faith and is himself won over. Yūdāsaf renounces his royal estate and embarks on missionary journeys: after various adventures, he reaches Kas̲h̲mīr (i.e., Kusinārā), where he entrusts the future of his religion to his disciple Abābid (i.e., Ānanda) and dies.
The accompanying table shows the occurrence of the principal parables and fables in the three surviving Arabic versions and in the Georgian and Greek Christian recensions stemming therefrom.
¶
Early clues to the story’s transmission to the West are provided by Central Asian Buddhist-Soghdian texts, where Bodhisattva is shortened into the form Pwtysβ , i.e., Bōdīsaf , and by the Manichaean fragments recovered from Turfan in Chinese Turkestan. Le Coq published ( SBPr . Ak. W., 1909, 1202-18) a Manichaean Turkish fragment containing the encounter of the Bōdīsaf prince with the decrepit old man; the same scholar published ( Türkische Manichaica aus Chotscho , I, 5-7, in Abh . Pr. Ak. W., 1911, Anhang) and Radlov and Oldenburg ( Izv. Imp. Akad. Nauk , 6th ser., VI, 1912, 751-3, 779-82) elucidated another, containing the story of a drunken prince who mistakes a corpse for a maiden, later incorporated in the Ibn Bābūya version. Of particular importance is the discovery, communicated in 1957 by W. B. Henning to the 24th International Congress of Orientalists, Munich, of a fragment in the Berlin Turfan collection comprising portions of 27 couplets of an early Persian metrical rendering, in which the heroes’ names occur in the forms Bylwhr and Bwdysf . This fragment, containing part of Bilawhar’s exhortation to Bōdīsaf and of the dialogue concerning Bilawhar’s age, is part of a manuscript written not later than the first half of the 10th century A.D. The occurrence of the Iranian nameform Bwdysf, as opposed to the Arabic Būd̲h̲āsaf with -ā- in the second syllable, shows that this version belongs to the earliest line of transmission; it has been tentatively attributed to Rūdakī [q.v.] or his¶ school. These indications, pointing to a Central Asian environment and a Middle-Iranian language medium for the early development of the Bilawhar and Yūdāsaf romance, are supported by Yūdāsaf s inclusion, together with Mānī, Bardayṣān, Mazdak and others, in a list of false prophets condemned in ʿAbd al-Ḳāhir b. Ṭāhir al-Bag̲h̲dādī’s treatise Al-farḳ bayn al-firaḳ , (ed. Muḥammad Badr, Cairo 1328, 333; pt. II, trans. A. S. Halkin, Tel-Aviv, 1935, 200-1). Authorities such as al-Bīrūnī ( Chronology of Ancient Nations , trans. Sachau, 186-9) connect Būd̲h̲āsaf with the Sabaeans, who were supposed to identify him with both Enoch and Hermes Trismegistus; Būd̲h̲āsaf was also represented as having invented the Iranian alphabet.
Versions of the work. Among the books translated in early ʿAbbāsid times from Pehlevi into Arabic by Ibn al-Muḳaffaʿ [q.v.] and his school, the Fihrist lists (305) the Kitāb al-Budd , the Kitāb Bilawhar wa-Yūdāsaf (Būd̲h̲āsaf) and the Kitāb Būd̲h̲āsaf mufrad . The last-named book survives as a chapter of the Nihāyat al-Irab fī Ak̲h̲bār al-Furs wa ’l-ʿArab (Browne in JRAS, 1900, 216-7; Rosen in Zap. Vost. Otd. Imp. Russk. Ark̲h̲. Obs̲h̲čestva , 1901-2, 77-118). The first two are amalgamated in the Kitāb Bilawhar wa-Būd̲h̲āsaf published at Bombay in 1306/1888-9 (Russian trans. by Rosen, edit. by Kračkovskiy: Povestʾ o Varlaame pusti̊nnike i Iosafe tsareviče indiyskom , Moscow, 1947). This Bombay edition is the fullest version extant: episodes introduced from the Kitāb al-Budd having been distinguished from the remainder, the original Bilawhar and Būd̲h̲āsaf (Yūdāsaf) story may be largely reconstituted, reference being made to the Halle abstract (edit. by Hommel in Verh. des VII. Int. Orient.-Cong., Semit. Sect ., Vienna 1888, 115-65; trans. Rehatsek, JRAS, 1890, 119-55), the adaptation incorporated in the S̲h̲īʿī Kitāb ikmāl al-dīn waʾitmām al-niʿma by Ibn Bābūya [q.v.], the longer Georgian Christianised version discovered in Jerusalem (Greek Patriarchal Library, Ms. Georgian 140: edit. Abuladze, Balavarianis kʿartʿuli redakʿtsiebi , Tiflis, 1957), as well as to the early 13th century Hebrew paraphrase by Abraham b. Ḥasday or Chisdai (see Steinschneider, Die hebr. Übersetzungen des Mittelalters , 863-7). The longish fragment of the Kitāb Bilawhar wa-Yūdāsaf in the Taymūriyya collection, Ak̲h̲lāḳ section (Brockelmann, I, 158) has been identified by Stern as belonging to the same redaction as the Halle abstract; it supplies some of the text missing in the defective unique Ms. of this recension (notes supplied by S. M. Stern). The metrical version stated in the Fihrist (119) to have been composed by Abān al-Lāḥiḳī [q.v.] has perished.
Note that in the Mss., the name of Yūdāsaf is written in many different ways; the original Būd̲h̲āsaf or Būdāsaf has been corrupted by addition of a diacritical point into Yūd̲h̲āsaf (whence Yūzāsaf ) or Yūdāsaf, and thence Georgian Iodasapʿ , from which cornes Greek loasaph , then Latin Josaphat .
Diffusion of the story. With its companion works, the Kalīla wa-Dimna and the romance of Sindbād, the book of Bilawhar and Yūdāsaf was widely diffused in early Arabic literature. Note for instance the allusion in the Rasāʾil Ik̲h̲wān al-Ṣafāʾ (Cairo ed., iv, 120, 223) to Bilawhar’s fable of the King, the just Wazīr and the Happy Poor Couple, in connexion with belief in immortality.
The Western Barlaam and loasaph (Josaphat) legend derives from the Kitāb Bilawhar wa-Yūdāsaf via the longer Georgian (Jerusalem) redaction, wherein the heroes’ names appear as Balahvar and
¶
Also to be rejected is the Aḥmadī doctrine which identifies with Jesus Christ the holy Yūz Āsaf whose shrine is venerated at Srīnagar in Kas̲h̲mīr. Many of the legends concerning the Yūz Āsaf of the Aḥmadīs are simply extracts borrowed from the Kitāb Bilawhar wa-Yūdāsaf , with “Kas̲h̲mīr” substituted for “Kusinārā”, the traditional place where the Buddha died.
Contents of story. To the long childless king Janaysar, a pagan ruler of Sūlābaṭ (i.e., Kapilavastu) in India, a son is born by miraculous means. The king names him Yūdāsaf (better: Būd̲h̲āsaf = Bodhisattva). An astrologer predicts that the prince’s greatness will not be of this world; the king therefore confines the child in a city set apart, to keep him from knowledge of human misery. Growing up, Yūdāsaf frets at his confinement and insists on being allowed out. Riding forth, he sees two infirm men and later, a decrepit old man, and learns of human frailty and death. The holy hermit Bilawhar of Sarandīb (Ceylon) then appears in disguise and preaches to Yūdāsaf in parables, convincing him of the vanity of human existence and the superiority of the ascetic way. Bilawhar spurns renown and riches, indulgence in food and drink, sexual pleasure and all fleshly delights; a vague theism coupled with belief in immortality is preached, but no specifically Islamic dogma advanced.
King Janaysar is hostile to Bilawhar and opposes Yūdāsaf s conversion. In spite of the efforts of the astrologer Rākis and the pagan ascetic al-Bahwan, Janaysar is overcome in a mock debate on the faith and is himself won over. Yūdāsaf renounces his royal estate and embarks on missionary journeys: after various adventures, he reaches Kas̲h̲mīr (i.e., Kusinārā), where he entrusts the future of his religion to his disciple Abābid (i.e., Ānanda) and dies.
The accompanying table shows the occurrence of the principal parables and fables in the three surviving Arabic versions and in the Georgian and Greek Christian recensions stemming therefrom.
¶
TABLE I
Sources. The Kitāb Bilawhar wa-Yūdāsaf is not a direct translation from any Indian Buddhist work, but a syncretic compilation built round episodes in the legendary life of Buddha; it embodies parables of extraneous provenance, including the New Testament parable of the Sower. The narrative framework contains sections reminiscent of such works as the Buddha-carita , the Mahāvastu , the Lalita-iistara and the Jātaka Tales . Note that in the authentic tradition, the Buddha had no teacher, however, the ascetic preacher Bilawhar figures in embryo in the Fourth Omen, where the Buddha-elect encounters in Kapilavastu one who had become a wanderer “for the sake of winning self-control, calm, and utter release”.Early clues to the story’s transmission to the West are provided by Central Asian Buddhist-Soghdian texts, where Bodhisattva is shortened into the form Pwtysβ , i.e., Bōdīsaf , and by the Manichaean fragments recovered from Turfan in Chinese Turkestan. Le Coq published ( SBPr . Ak. W., 1909, 1202-18) a Manichaean Turkish fragment containing the encounter of the Bōdīsaf prince with the decrepit old man; the same scholar published ( Türkische Manichaica aus Chotscho , I, 5-7, in Abh . Pr. Ak. W., 1911, Anhang) and Radlov and Oldenburg ( Izv. Imp. Akad. Nauk , 6th ser., VI, 1912, 751-3, 779-82) elucidated another, containing the story of a drunken prince who mistakes a corpse for a maiden, later incorporated in the Ibn Bābūya version. Of particular importance is the discovery, communicated in 1957 by W. B. Henning to the 24th International Congress of Orientalists, Munich, of a fragment in the Berlin Turfan collection comprising portions of 27 couplets of an early Persian metrical rendering, in which the heroes’ names occur in the forms Bylwhr and Bwdysf . This fragment, containing part of Bilawhar’s exhortation to Bōdīsaf and of the dialogue concerning Bilawhar’s age, is part of a manuscript written not later than the first half of the 10th century A.D. The occurrence of the Iranian nameform Bwdysf, as opposed to the Arabic Būd̲h̲āsaf with -ā- in the second syllable, shows that this version belongs to the earliest line of transmission; it has been tentatively attributed to Rūdakī [q.v.] or his¶ school. These indications, pointing to a Central Asian environment and a Middle-Iranian language medium for the early development of the Bilawhar and Yūdāsaf romance, are supported by Yūdāsaf s inclusion, together with Mānī, Bardayṣān, Mazdak and others, in a list of false prophets condemned in ʿAbd al-Ḳāhir b. Ṭāhir al-Bag̲h̲dādī’s treatise Al-farḳ bayn al-firaḳ , (ed. Muḥammad Badr, Cairo 1328, 333; pt. II, trans. A. S. Halkin, Tel-Aviv, 1935, 200-1). Authorities such as al-Bīrūnī ( Chronology of Ancient Nations , trans. Sachau, 186-9) connect Būd̲h̲āsaf with the Sabaeans, who were supposed to identify him with both Enoch and Hermes Trismegistus; Būd̲h̲āsaf was also represented as having invented the Iranian alphabet.
Versions of the work. Among the books translated in early ʿAbbāsid times from Pehlevi into Arabic by Ibn al-Muḳaffaʿ [q.v.] and his school, the Fihrist lists (305) the Kitāb al-Budd , the Kitāb Bilawhar wa-Yūdāsaf (Būd̲h̲āsaf) and the Kitāb Būd̲h̲āsaf mufrad . The last-named book survives as a chapter of the Nihāyat al-Irab fī Ak̲h̲bār al-Furs wa ’l-ʿArab (Browne in JRAS, 1900, 216-7; Rosen in Zap. Vost. Otd. Imp. Russk. Ark̲h̲. Obs̲h̲čestva , 1901-2, 77-118). The first two are amalgamated in the Kitāb Bilawhar wa-Būd̲h̲āsaf published at Bombay in 1306/1888-9 (Russian trans. by Rosen, edit. by Kračkovskiy: Povestʾ o Varlaame pusti̊nnike i Iosafe tsareviče indiyskom , Moscow, 1947). This Bombay edition is the fullest version extant: episodes introduced from the Kitāb al-Budd having been distinguished from the remainder, the original Bilawhar and Būd̲h̲āsaf (Yūdāsaf) story may be largely reconstituted, reference being made to the Halle abstract (edit. by Hommel in Verh. des VII. Int. Orient.-Cong., Semit. Sect ., Vienna 1888, 115-65; trans. Rehatsek, JRAS, 1890, 119-55), the adaptation incorporated in the S̲h̲īʿī Kitāb ikmāl al-dīn waʾitmām al-niʿma by Ibn Bābūya [q.v.], the longer Georgian Christianised version discovered in Jerusalem (Greek Patriarchal Library, Ms. Georgian 140: edit. Abuladze, Balavarianis kʿartʿuli redakʿtsiebi , Tiflis, 1957), as well as to the early 13th century Hebrew paraphrase by Abraham b. Ḥasday or Chisdai (see Steinschneider, Die hebr. Übersetzungen des Mittelalters , 863-7). The longish fragment of the Kitāb Bilawhar wa-Yūdāsaf in the Taymūriyya collection, Ak̲h̲lāḳ section (Brockelmann, I, 158) has been identified by Stern as belonging to the same redaction as the Halle abstract; it supplies some of the text missing in the defective unique Ms. of this recension (notes supplied by S. M. Stern). The metrical version stated in the Fihrist (119) to have been composed by Abān al-Lāḥiḳī [q.v.] has perished.
Note that in the Mss., the name of Yūdāsaf is written in many different ways; the original Būd̲h̲āsaf or Būdāsaf has been corrupted by addition of a diacritical point into Yūd̲h̲āsaf (whence Yūzāsaf ) or Yūdāsaf, and thence Georgian Iodasapʿ , from which cornes Greek loasaph , then Latin Josaphat .
Diffusion of the story. With its companion works, the Kalīla wa-Dimna and the romance of Sindbād, the book of Bilawhar and Yūdāsaf was widely diffused in early Arabic literature. Note for instance the allusion in the Rasāʾil Ik̲h̲wān al-Ṣafāʾ (Cairo ed., iv, 120, 223) to Bilawhar’s fable of the King, the just Wazīr and the Happy Poor Couple, in connexion with belief in immortality.
The Western Barlaam and loasaph (Josaphat) legend derives from the Kitāb Bilawhar wa-Yūdāsaf via the longer Georgian (Jerusalem) redaction, wherein the heroes’ names appear as Balahvar and
¶
TABLE 2
Transmission of the Book of Bilawhar and Yūdāsaf Iodasapʿ; the Georgian was adapted and rendered into Greek by St. Euthymius the Athonite and his school about A.D. 1000. The mediaeval attribution of the Greek Barlaam to St. John Damascene, revived by F. Dölger ( Der griechische Barlaam-Roman , ein Werk des H. Johannes von Damaskos , Ettal 1953), fails to take account of the textual evidence and is to be discounted.Also to be rejected is the Aḥmadī doctrine which identifies with Jesus Christ the holy Yūz Āsaf whose shrine is venerated at Srīnagar in Kas̲h̲mīr. Many of the legends concerning the Yūz Āsaf of the Aḥmadīs are simply extracts borrowed from the Kitāb Bilawhar wa-Yūdāsaf , with “Kas̲h̲mīr” substituted for “Kusinārā”, the traditional place where the Buddha died.
Comments
Post a Comment