‘On the sources of the Barlaam Romance’

Literarische Stoffe BEITRÄGE ZUR IRANISTIK Gegründet von Georges Redard, herausgegeben von Nicholas Sims-Williams Band 31 Literarische Stoffe und ihre Gestaltung in mitteliranischer Zeit Herausgegeben von Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst, Christiane Reck und Dieter Weber WIESBADEN 2009 DR. LUDWIG REICHERT VERLAG Literarische Stoffe und ihre Gestaltung in mitteliranischer Zeit Kolloquium anlässlich des 70. Geburtstages von Werner Sundermann Herausgegeben von Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst, Christiane Reck und Dieter Weber WIESBADEN 2009 DR. LUDWIG REICHERT VERLAG Förderung der Tagung und die Drucklegung des Tagungsbandes durch die Fritz Thyssen Stiftung Veranstaltung der Tagung: Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.ddb.de abrufbar. © 2009 Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag Wiesbaden ISBN: 978-3-89500-671-5 www.reichert-verlag.de Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Speicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Gedruckt auf säurefreiem Papier (alterungsbeständig pH7 –, neutral) Printed in Germany VII Inhalt Seiten Peter Zieme Laudatio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 François de Blois On the sources of the Barlaam Romance, or How the Buddha became a Christian saint .............................. 7 Iris Colditz „Autorthema“, Selbstproklamation und Ich-Form in der alt- und mitteliranischen Literatur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst The literary form of the Vessantaraj¡taka in Sogdian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 With an appendix by Elio Provasi: The names of the prince . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Philippe Gignoux Les relations interlinguistiques de quelques termes de la pharmacopée antique . . . . . 91 Almuth Hintze The Return of the Fravashis in the Avestan Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Manfred Hutter Das so genannte Pandn¡mag £ Zardušt: Eine zoroastrische Auseinandersetzung mit gnostisch-manichäischem Traditionsgut? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Maria Macuch Gelehrte Frauen – ein ungewöhnliches Motiv in der Pahlavi-Literatur . . . . . . . . . 135 Mauro Maggi Annotations on the Book of Zambasta, I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Enrico Morano Sogdian Tales in Manichaean Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Antonio Panaino Ahreman and Narcissus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 Christiane Reck Soghdische manichäische Parabeln in soghdischer Schrift mit zwei Beispielen: Parabeln mit Hasen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 Kurt Rudolph Literarische Formen der mandäischen Überlieferung . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 VIII Shaul Shaked Spells and incantations between Iranian and Aramaic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 Nicholas Sims-Williams The Bactrian fragment in Manichaean script (M 1224) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 Prods Oktor Skjærvø Reflexes of Iranian oral traditions in Manichean literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 Alois van Tongerloo A Nobleman in Trouble, or the consequences of drunkenness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 Dieter Weber Ein Pahlavi-Fragment des Alexanderromans aus Ägypten? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 Jens Wilkens Ein manichäischer Alptraum? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 Yutaka Yoshida The Karabalgasun Inscription and the Khotanese documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349 Stefan Zimmer Vom Kaukasus bis Irland — iranisch-keltische Literaturbeziehungen? . . . . . . . . . . 363 TAFELN On the sources of the Barlaam Romance, or: How the Buddha became a Christian saint François de Blois, Cambridge 1. The book of Bilawhar and B¥Ñ¡saf in Arabic The Arabic book of Bilawhar and B¥Ñ¡saf (hereafter: BwB) has come down to us in three different versions: two old, non-Christian, recensions (we will refer to them as the long and the short recension) and a more recent, Christian, version. The long recension has survived intact in a number of manuscripts, all of which emanate from the Ismaili (·ayyib£) sect in its strongholds in the Yemen and in Western India. On the title-page of his valuable translation of this book Gimaret styles it “la version arabe ismaélienne”, but it is perhaps worth mentioning that there is actually nothing in the text that could be considered to re ect speciŸcally Ismaili doctrine. It would appear rather to be an essentially non-Ismaili work which happens to have been preserved in its entirety only by this particular sect. In fact a fragment of an abridged version of the same recension is found also in a manuscript kept in Halle, which appears to emanate not from Ismailis, but from Druze, and a smaller fragment of the same abridgement is contained in a collection of sapiential texts now in the Taym¥riyyah library in Cairo, a manuscript without an evident sectarian provenance.1 The long recension was Ÿrst published by an Ismaili printing house in Bombay in 1889 and it has been republished in a critical edition by Gimaret (1972), who has also provided a French translation (Gimaret 1971a), the latter with a long introduction. An Arabic text close, though perhaps not entirely identical, to the surviving long recension was the source of a Christianised Georgian translation, the Balavariani,2 which in turn is the source of the much expanded Greek book of Barlaam and Ioasaph, traditionally ascribed to St John of Damascus (who lived in the 7th and 8th centuries), but in fact almost certainly the work of a Georgian monk on Mount Athos, St Euthymius (who died in 1028),3 from whence derive all 1 For the Halle and Taym¥riyyah manuscripts see Gimaret 1971a, 25–27. 2 Gimaret 1971a, 50–54, with references to earlier studies. 3 The statement that Euthymius translated this book from Georgian to Greek is found on the title-page of some of the manuscripts of the Greek Barlaam and Ioasaph, as well as in the biography of Euthymius by his contempory George the Hagiorite, but this information is rejected in most of the older secondary literature. Only after the discovery in 1956 of the Jerusalem manuscript of the Balavariani (the unique complete copy) François de Blois 8 the other Christian versions in the languages of Europe and the Middle East, including a Christian Arabic translation.4 An apparently incomplete Arabic copy of the long recension is the basis also of the Hebrew Book of the prince and the ascetic by the 13th-century author Ibn µasd¡y,5 who, like the author of the Greek version, greatly expanded the text that he had before him. The short recension of the Arabic text has been preserved by the in uential twelver-Shiite author Ibn B¡b¥yah (died 991), who cites it in extenso towards the end of his treatise on the “occultation” of the twelfth iman with the title Kit¡bu Òikm¡li d-d£ni wa Òitm¡mi n-niÓmah.6 This recension is re ected by a Persian translation (expressly from the text preserved by Ibn B¡b¥yah) made by Majlis£ (who died in 1699), and also by a Persian paraphrase (perhaps also from Ibn B¡b¥yah’s text, though this does not seem to be stated explicitly) by the Timurid historian Niõ¡mu d-d£n Š¡m£, preserved notably in an autograph manuscript completed in 1401.7 The text of the long recension falls logically into Ÿve parts of rather unequal length:8 Part 1 (= Bombay edition,9 pp. 3–37) describes the birth and infancy of prince B¥Ñ¡saf down to the point where he becomes aware of the reality of illness, old age, suffering and death. has the Georgian origin of the Greek romance (and with it also the authorship by Euthymius) found general acceptance. See Gimaret 1971a, 7–8, and the literature cited there. 4 The Christian Arabic version has not to my knowledge been published, but some extracts from it are edited and discussed in Zotenberg 1886. Although this version clearly derives from the Greek, it shows reminiscences of the older Arabic versions, in particular by retaining the names Bilawhar and Y¥d¡saf (for B¥Ñ¡saf), rather than some oÙshoot of the Greek forms Barlaam and Ioasaph. 5 Gimaret 1971a, 47–50. 6 This book, which previous students (e.g. Stern and Walzer 1971, Gimaret 1971a, de Blois 1990) consulted in the form of manuscripts, or of an old lithographed edition, is now available in a type-set edition (with a slightly different title; see the bibliography under Ibn B¡b¥yah), where the Bilawhar story occupies pp. 577–638. For its relationship with the other versions of BwB see Gimaret 1971a, 27–35. 7 See Gimaret 1971a, 43–47, with a cogent discussion concerning the identity of the author. 8 Gimaret (in his edition and translation) divides the text into four sections, as follows: my part 1 = Gimaret’s prologue my part 2 = Gimaret’s première partie my parts 3 and 4 = Gimaret’s deuxième partie my part 5 = Gimaret’s épilogue 9 The page numbers of the Bombay lithograph are indicated (in brackets) by Gimaret both in his edition and in his translation. On the sources of the Barlaam Romance 9 Part 2 (= pp. 37–135) describes the arrival of Bilawhar in the presence of the prince and of the instruction that he imparts to him, mainly in the guise of parables, and concludes with Bilawhar’s tearful departure from his princely pupil. Part 3 (= pp. 136–264) contains a long account of the debates that B¥Ñ¡saf carries out with his father and with the false teacher R¡kis, and ends with the conversion of the false teacher to his religion. Part 4 (= pp. 264–271) describes how, on the advice of a false ascetic called al-Bahwan, the king lets loose a horde of women to seduce B¥Ñ¡saf. The prince engenders a son, but after a dream conceives a horror of womankind and converts the mother of his son, then al-Bahwan, and Ÿnally his own father, to the true religion. Part 5 (= pp. 271–286) tells the story of B¥Ñ¡saf ’s elevation into heaven, his departure from his homeland and his death. The short recension is identical with the long recension, in substance, and for the most part also in wording, as far as the Ÿrst and last sections of the text are concerned (that is: part 1, the largest portion of part 2, and part 5), but the middle portion of the text of the long recension (the end of part 2, part 3, and part 4) is missing. Instead, the short recension continues the account of the teachings of Bilawhar with three additional stories, the third of which contains four sub-stories (so: seven additional stories altogether), followed by a very brief account of Bilawhar’s departure. Then this version rejoins the long recension for part 5. The contents of the two recensions are summarised in the following comparative table. For convenience, the sixteen parables shared by the two versions are numbered [1] to [16], the parables speciŸc to the long recension are numbered [L17] to [L31] and those speciŸc to the short recension are styled [S17] to [S23]. Synopsis of the two Arabic versions of the Book of Bilawhar and B¥Ñ¡saf (Part 1) A king in the land of Šawil¡baÞÞ [Kapilavatthu], in India, by the name of Junaysar [‰uddhodana?] persecutes the ascetics. One of his wives dreams that she is visited by a ying white elephant; the wise men announce that she will give birth to a son. An ascetic harangues the king, but Junaysar rejects his advice. The queen bears a son, B¥Ñ¡saf [Bodhisattva]. One of the royal astronomers predicts that he will be a great ascetic. To prevent this, the king orders that the prince must never be exposed to suffering or death. He continues to persecute the ascetics and orders them to be burnt alive. B¥Ñ¡saf grows up ignorant of suffering. Eventually, one of his tutors admits that he has been raised in isolation from the world. He gets his father’s permission to go out into the world, where he encounters a sick man, a blind man and an old man. At the advice of his astrologers the king orders his son François de Blois 10 to slaughter a sheep, but B¥Ñ¡saf is unable to carry out the order. He cuts his own hand with the knife and experiences suffering. (Part 2A) In Sarand£b the sage Bilawhar hears about B¥Ñ¡saf. He gains admission to his presence pretending to be a merchant and instructs him with the help of parables: [1] [2] [3] The king and the drum of death The four coÙers The sower [Biblical] [4] [5] [6] The doctor and the sick man The man in the well [from Kal£lah wa Dimnah] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] The three companions The stranger who was king for one year The dogs and the corpse The king who ate his own son Bilawhar discusses the differences between religions The gardener The bird Q¡dim The two suns The king and the wise minister [15] The swimmer and his brother The rich young man and the poor young man [16] B¥Ñ¡saf asks Bilawhar how old he is The bird and the gardener Questions and answers [= Ÿrst extract from the Ay¡dg¡r £ Wuzurgmihr] Preachings of Bilawhar More questions and answers [= second extract from the Ay¡dg¡r £ Wuzurgmihr] Long recension Short recension (Part 2B) B¥Ñ¡saf asks if it will be possible to convert his father and Bilawhar Bilawhar preaches about truth and lies [L17] The garden in the desert B¥Ñ¡saf’s guardian overhears Bilawhar’s teaching and is converted [L18] The obedient and the disobedient soldiers Bilawhar announces his intention to leave the kingdom [L19] The gazelle Bilawhar describes the life of the ascetics and departs, after exchanging garments with B¥Ñ¡saf. responds with three stories: [S17] A king discovers a white hair in his beard and decides to renounce the world [Buddhist] [S18] The man and the skull [S19] A prince renounces the world after seeing death, sickness and old age. He explains his refusal to marry with four sub-stories: [S20] The drunken prince who makes love with a corpse [S21] The jar of snakes [S22] The imprisoned prince [S23] The she-demon and the On the sources of the Barlaam Romance shipwrecked sailors [Buddhist] Bilawhar realises that he has taught B¥Ñ¡saf everything he can and departs. B¥Ñ¡saf remains behind. (Part 3) The king Ÿnds out about Bilawhar’s visit and sends his men to search for him. They apprehend a group of ascetics led by the Bone-Carrier. The king’s henchman R¡kis assumes (by sorcery) the appearance of Bilawhar and the king has him captured. Debate between the king and his son, each one of whom tells a story: [L20] King K¡sid [L21] Budd and the baby griÙons B¥Ñ¡saf visits the imprisoned ascetics who tell him the story of: [L22] The ascetics and the master of the house. The ascetics die in prison. Second debate between the king and his son, each of whom cites the authority of Budd. The ancestors of Junaysar B¥Ñ¡saf tells the parables of: [L23] The stolen jewels [L24] Budd and the two brothers [L25] The children adopted by monkeys [L26] The doctor and the city of fools [L27] The golden vessels B¥Ñ¡saf converts R¡kis (=the false Bilawhar) after telling the story of: [L28] The birds and the Ÿsh (Part 4) Al-Bahwan [Ud¡yin?], a false ascetic, encourages the king to use women to waylay B¥Ñ¡saf. [L29] The soldier and his wife [L30] The child and the she-demons B¥Ñ¡saf is seduced and conceives a son, but Bilawhar and the Bone-Carrier appear to him in a dream and reawaken his horror of the female. B¥Ñ¡saf converts his father, then al-Bahwan, after telling the story of: 11 François de Blois 12 [L31] The peacock and the crow [Buddhist] B¥Ñ¡saf’s son is born (Part 5) An angel appears to B¥Ñ¡saf and commands him to renounce the world. He prepares to depart from the kingdom. Various associates, and a talking horse, try to detain him, but in vain. He stops under a great tree. Four angels elevate him to heaven where everything is revealed to him. After a while he returns to his homeland and preaches to its people. King Junaysar dies after B¥Ñ¡saf comforts him on his death bed. B¥Ñ¡saf abdicates the throne in favour of his uncle SamÞa [Chandaka]. He travels all over India preaching, together with his pupil +An¡nd [nanda], then dies in Kašm£r. SamÞ¡ dies and is succeeded by B¥Ñ¡saf's son, Š¡mil [R¡hul?]. The textual relationship between the two recensions is quite straightforward. It is evident that one of them must derive from a defective manuscript of the other, a manuscript in which, due to loss of one or more quires, a large section in the middle part of the text was missing, but the concluding section (part 5) was still intact, and that the redactor of the derivative version has Ÿlled the very obvious gap with extraneous material. In principle one could imagine that either one of the two recensions is the original one. Datable evidence for both versions commences actually at about the same time, for the short recension with Ibn B¡b¥yah in the second half of the 10th century, for the long recension with the Georgian translation, which though not precisely datable, must in any case be older than the Greek version by Euthymius, who died in 1028. But there are good reasons to assume (as indeed most previous scholars have assumed) that the long recension is the original and that the short recension is secondary. Evidence for this can be seen in the way in which the two versions describe the departure of Bilawhar. Towards the end of part 2, where the two versions go their separate ways, the long recension continues with an extended discussion about the nature of truth and falsehood, illustrated by the story L17 (“the garden in the desert”), followed by the account of how B¥Ñ¡saf ’s guardian eavesdrops on the prince and his teacher and immediately converts to Bilawhar’s teaching. Then Bilawhar announces that he wishes to depart so that he can join his companions for a festival. B¥Ñ¡saf expresses dismay at his teacher’s intention and declares that he will accompany him. Bilawhar refuses to let him go with him and explains his refusal with an exceptionally apposite story (L19) about a tame gazelle who rejoins his ock and, in so doing, inadvertently draws his captors’ attention to the herd and causes them all to be hunted down and slaughtered. If (as Bilawhar continues) the prince were to join him and his companions in their place of seclusion their fate would be like that of the gazelles. B¥Ñ¡saf accepts this reasoning and, after interrogating Bilawhar at considerable length about the nature of his ascetic life, allows him to depart. The narrative then returns to the prince’s pious guardian and leads into the account of B¥Ñ¡saf ’s debate with his father. On the sources of the Barlaam Romance 13 In the short recension all of this is missing. Instead, Bilawhar’s teaching continues with seven further stories (S17 to S23), all similar in character and evidently all taken from a single source. These are followed by just a couple of lines of text announcing that Bilawhar continued instructing the prince for several days and then left him and went to another country, whereupon the text continues immediately with part 5. Thus, whereas the long recension contains a well worked out and motivated account of the crucial incident of Bilawhar’s departure from his princely pupil the short recension makes short shrift of the whole incident. The redactor of the short recension evidently Ÿlled the gap in his manuscript by inserting the seven stories that he found in some totally unconnected work and then drafted an absolutely minimalist narrative to link these with the remaining fragment of his master copy. This is exactly the sort of thing one would expect from a copyist when faced with an obviously incomplete text. But the main argument for the primacy of the long recension is the fact that it alone retains (in part 4) an important part of the underlying Buddhist frame story. But to demonstrate this we need to backtrack just a little. 2. Buddhist and non-Buddhist elements in the frame story Since the middle of the 19th century scholars have been aware that the famous Christian romance of Barlaam and Josaphat must derive from some Indian version of the life of the Buddha and the subsequent discovery of the Arabic versions has convinced the world of scholarship that the Buddha story passed to the West via an Arabic intermediary. For example, it was realised that the name of the protagonist in the Christian versions (Georgian YodasapÓ, Greek Ioasaph, Latin Josaphat, etc.) goes back to the mispointing (two subscript dots instead of one) of Ÿrst letter in Arabic ywÑsf / bwÑsf, a transparent transcription of Sanskrit Bodhisattva;10 the spelling in the Christian versions can only be explained as the result of a 10 As I pointed out in de Blois/Sims-Williams 2006, 101, the Sanskrit title Bodhisattva appears in Manichaean Parthian as bwdysdf, while Buddhist Sogdian has (among other forms; see in detail Sims-Williams 2004, 544–5) pwtysÏ /bÚdisaf/. The (hypothetical) Middle Persian (Zoroastrian Pahlavi) translation of the life of the Buddha would presumably have had *bwtysp for /*bÚdisaf/, which the Arabic translator would have interpreted as *BÚсsaf and written with -¡- for the non-Arabic --. The bwdysf in the fragment of the New Persian poetical version (discussed below) is presumably Arabic B¥Ñ¡saf with the customary Òim¡la of Arabic long -¡-. The mispointing of the Arabic form as ywdÒsf resulted in Georgian YodasapÓ, Greek *IWDASAF > IWASAF, Latin Josaphat. See (differently) Henning 1959, operating with the (unproven) hypothesis of a Manichaean and Sogdian transmission of the story from India to the West, of which more presently. I do not deny that Middle Persian *bwtysp is probably a loan word from Sogdian (like New Persian but, ‘Buddha, Buddha-statue, idol’), but this shows only that the Buddhist vocabulary in Persian was imported from the Sogdiana, not that the book of BwB has anything to do with Sogdians. 14 François de Blois scribal corruption within the Arabic textual tradition. The study of the Indian sources of the Barlaam romance culminated in an important paper by the Indologist Ernst Kuhn published in 1893. Since then, the recovery of the full text of the Georgian translation in 1956 has revealed this to be the missing link between the Arabic and the Greek. But it has not to my knowledge been explicitly noted that the legendary life of the Buddha is not actually reproduced by the whole of the Barlaam/Bilawhar story, but only by the Ÿrst and last sections of the latter, that is: part 1 (the birth of the Bodhisattva in swlÒbÞ [Kapilavatthu],11 his father jnysr [‰uddhodana?],12 his childhood and youth, down to his fateful discovery of disease, old age and death), part 4 (his marriage, the birth of his son šÒml [R¡hul?]13 and his subsequent abhorrence of women) and part 5 (his enlightenment in the shadow of a tree, his departure from his father’s kingdom, his preaching, his death in Kašm£r, the spiritual succession of his pupil + ÒnÒnd14 [nanda]). By contrast, parts 2 and 3 of the Arabic version and its oÙshoots have no parallel in the Buddha legend. The most striking difference between the Buddha and B¥Ñ¡saf is of course the fact that the former received his enlightenment entirely through his own efforts while the latter obtained his wisdom through instruction by his teacher, Bilawhar. The Buddha does not have a teacher and the teacher Ÿgure in the B¥Ñ¡saf romance is a most glaring non-Indian feature, the result, I should think, of an effort by a monotheistic redactor to reconcile this edifying story with the insistence by the three Abrahamic religions that true knowledge is transmitted only by a series of prophets (Moses, Jesus, Muhammad) who descend from a common biological and spiritual ancestor, Abraham. There is no place in this scheme for the autodidact Bodhisattva. The author of the Barlaam romance had to invent a teacher for the Bodhisattva, a traveller from a distant country, and thus, at least potentially, the heir to some branch of the unique Abrahamic tradition. The name assigned to this teacher (Bilawhar in the Arabic versions), an Indian source 11 In Pahlavi script kp-, if joined together in rapid writing, could look very much like sp, so kplÒpt > splÒpt could have been interpreted as /s-Ï-l-¡-p-t/. The Ÿrst letter is pointed as š in the Mss. of the long recension but as s in Ibn B¡b¥yah; see Gimaret 1972, apparatus to 25,4. I add that the vocalisation of this, and the other names, used above in the synoptic table is purely conventional (mostly following Gimaret 1971a). 12 It is conceivable (I shall not put it more strongly) that the Sasanian translator represented ‰uddhodana with the Pahlavi letters swttn, which the Arabic translator could have read as yynttr, interpreting the initial y- as /j-/, with subsequent expansion of the four teeth of -yntt- to Ÿve and their repointing as -nys-. 13 The name of B¥Ñ¡saf’s son occurs not at this point, but only at the very end of part 5, in the long recension only, on the last page of the book. A Pahlavi lÒhwl could conceivably have been misread as šÒwl; the replacement of -w- by -m- is perhaps more easily explained as an inner-Arabic corruption, possibly facilitated by a reinterpretation of the name as Arabic š¡mil, ‘all-embracing’. 14 The rasm which could be pointed as ÒnÒnd is found in Ibn B¡b¥yah (see Gimaret 1972, apparatus to 196,5; thus also in the Qum edition, 638). The manuscripts of the long recension have one tooth too many in the Ÿnal group and point the name as ÒbÒbyd etc. On the sources of the Barlaam Romance 15 of which scholars have sought in vain, is presumably a cross between the common Arabic words billawr, ‘crystal’, and jawhar, ‘jewel’, loanwords from Middle Persian blÚr and gÚhr respectively. I remind readers that the teacher introduces himself into the presence of the prince claiming precisely to be in possession of a miraculous “jewel”.15 But the main issue here is not the non-Indian name but the blatantly non-Indian notion that the Buddha derived his wisdom from a human mentor. The continuation of the story in part 3, after the departure of the teacher, has, at least in its main story line, likewise no real point of contact with the Buddha legend. On the other hand, it contains several narrative motives (B¥Ñ¡saf debates with and eventually converts his unbelieving father; the sorceror R¡kis assumes the appearance of Bilawhar, so that the false Bilawhar might publicly renounce Bilawhar’s teachings) which have rather striking parallels in the last part of the Ÿctional autobiography of St Clement of Rome,16 where Clement debates with and eventually converts his pagan father Faustus, where the sorceror Simon Magus imposes his own outward appearance on Faustus and where St Peter induces Faustus (in his guise as the false Simon) publicly to renounce Simon’s teachings. It is hard to say in which of these two classics of Christian edifying literature the story is more implausible, more badly motivated, more clumsily characterised, but it is certainly unlikely that the two accounts should be totally independent of each other. It seems rather that the R¡kis episode derives from some (presumably Arabic Christian) imitation of the Pseudo-Clementines. 3. The parables Bilawhar’s preaching, as we have mentioned, takes the form mainly of parables. Of the sixteen parables shared by both Arabic recensions there is one that is indisputably of Indian origin, namely no. 5, the well-known story of a man who ees a rampant elephant and hides in a well only to discover that he has taken refuge in a pit of poisonous snakes, a story attested in many Indian and Buddhist versions, beginning with the Mah¡bh¡rata.17 This tale occurs also in a very well-known Arabic work, namely the book of Kal£lah and Dimnah, embedded in the autobiography of BurzÚy, the author of the (lost) Middle Persian collection of Indian stories which is the source of the extant Arabic translation by Ibn al-MuqaÙaÓ. In my book on the origin of the book of Kal£lah and Dimnah18 I published (on pp. 74–80) parallel critical editions of the story of the “man in the well” as it appears in the best manuscripts of KwD and of BwB 15 Bombay p. 39 = Gimaret p. 34, 7: Òin naõarta h¡Ñ¡ l-jawhara etc. 16 Pseudo-Clement, Homilies, lib. 20, cap. 12–23 = Recognitions, lib. 10, cap. 53–68. 17 The history of this story is the subject of Kuhn 1888. 18 de Blois 1990, reviewed, unduly kindly, by the dedicatee of this volume, in Sundermann 1992. François de Blois 16 and demonstrated (on pp. 34–37) that both books contain what is essentially the same Arabic text. It is thus obvious that the author of the extant Arabic book of BwB has taken this story from the extant Arabic book of KwD; if the story had already been in the putative Sasanian original of the former then the Arabic translator would hardly have produced a version so close in wording to that of the same story in KwD. After story 16 the two Arabic recensions have (split into two segments) a long paranaetic dialogue between the master and his pupil in which Jean de Menasce19 recognised a version of the Ay¡dg¡r £ Wuzurgmihr, a treatise which survives both in its Middle Persian original and in an Arabic translation preserved by Miskawayh in his Arabic book with the Persian title J¡wÑ¡n xiraÑ. But here again it must be stressed that the dialogue which the author puts into the mouths of Bilawhar and of B¥Ñ¡saf is an extract from the same Arabic text that Miskawayh attributes explicitly to Buzurjmihr (Wuzurgmihr). So it was clearly the author of the Arabic BwB, and not that of its putative Sasanian source, who inserted the words of Wuzurgmihr into the mouth of the protagonists of this romance. Story no. 3 is, as has always been recognised, the Biblical parable of the sower whose good seed fell in part on good, in part on bad soil. Gimaret20 has noted that the same parable is cited in much the same wording by the Muslim mystic al-Mu¾¡sib£ in his Kit¡bu r-riÓ¡yah. So here again we need to conclude that the parable of the sower is not inherited from the putative Sasanian book of BwB, but copied from a Arabic literary source. A few of the other sub-stories in the section shared by the two Arabic recensions have parallels, or perhaps rather mere motivic similarities, with Indian and Buddhist stories; the relevant discussion can be found in Kuhn 1893, 74–82. The immediate sources of these stories have not been traced, but it is entirely plausible to think that they too were taken from preexisting works in Arabic. Of course, we cannot prove this. At this point, the thing I want to stress is that the only shared story that is deŸnitely of Indian origin (namely no. 5) is manifestly taken from a literary source in Arabic and not directly from some Indian or Buddhist work. The sections of the text that are unique to the long Arabic recension and its oÙshoots contain some narrative material of Buddhist origin. In part 3, in the debate between the king and his son, both parties cite repeatedly the authority of an ancient sage, “al-Budd”; we thus have the bizarre situation that B¥Ñ¡saf (the Bodhisattva) presents himself as a follower of alBudd (the Buddha). In fact, the titles Bodhisattva and Buddha refer to the same person, before 19 apud Gimaret 1971a, xi. See further ibid., 38–41. 20 Gimaret 1971b, 111–17. On the sources of the Barlaam Romance 17 and after his enlightenment respectively. Embedded in this section we Ÿnd also an account of the ancestors of B¥Ñ¡saf since “the time of al-Budd”, mentioning among others šbhny (variant šbhyn),21 for which the correct pointing is surely +snhyn, that is Sinhahanu, the Buddha’s grandfather. Commenting on this, Kuhn suggested very plausibly that this whole section has been interpolated from some other source, perhaps the Kit¡bu l-budd mentioned by an-Nad£m as one of the “Indian” books available to him in Arabic translation.22 As I have already stated, the story of the Bodhisattva’s temptation, the birth of his son and his subsequent renunciation of women, which form the main content of part 4 of the long recension, is clearly part of the authentic Buddha story, as it appears in the same context (just before the account of his enlightenment) in Nid¡nakath¡ or in Buddhacarita, but in BwB it has evidently been mixed up with extraneous elements. Here the temptation of the prince is instigated at the suggestion of a “false ascetic” called Òlbhwn (which, following Gimaret, I anglicize as “al-Bahwan”). Kuhn23 was probably right to suggest that this is Ud¡yin, the Bodhisattva’s friend, who, in the Sanskrit Buddhacarita, also plays a certain role in the story of the temptation. It is possible (I suggest) that the Middle Persian account of the life of the Buddha spelt Ud¡yin as ÒwtÒyný, which, given the ambiguity of several of the Pahlavi letters, the Arabic translator might have interpreted as Ònthywn çéïëNäA, which then, in the Arabic manuscripts could have been corrupted to Òlbhwn çéëFÜA. But the fact remains that al-Bahwan of BwB really has very little in common with the Ud¡yin of the Indian sources and one would consequently have to assume that the author of the Arabic BwB has in ated what in his source was only a name into a monstrous “false ascetic”, in effect, a double of the sorceror R¡kis in part 3, who (as suggested above) for his part is at least partially modelled on Simon Magus of the Clement Romance. The (in substance doubtless Buddhist) account of the dream which appeared to the Bodhisattva while he was sleeping in the harem also contains an obvious interpolation: namely the appearance in this vision both of Bilawhar (from part 2) and the bone-carrier (from part 3). The striking story of the peacock and the crow (L30) is, as Kuhn24 and others have noted, clearly the B¡veruj¡taka, but still I am not certain that it is really part of the Buddhist source of the frame story of BwB. For one thing, it is embedded in a clearly extraneous dialogue between B¥Ñ¡saf and al-Bahwan. Secondly, here, as in part 3, B¥Ñ¡saf 21 see the apparatus to Gimaret 1972, 142,8. 22 23 Kuhn 1893, 28: “der ganze Abschnitt scheint durch einen Interpolator beein usst, welcher oÙenbar Stücke des Kit¡b al-Budd mit dem echten Texte zusammengeschweisst hat”. The passage in the Fihrist mentioning the Kit¡bu l-budd will be discussed below. Kuhn 1893, 30. 24 Kuhn 1893, 31. François de Blois 18 invokes the authority of al-Budd, and thirdly, as the other genuinely Buddhist parts of the frame story (that is: parts 1 and 5) do not contain any sub-stories the appearance of an embedded story at this point is rather unexpected. I would suggest therefore that the author of the long recension inserted at this point an Arabic translation of the B¡veruj¡taka from an extraneous source, perhaps once again from the Kit¡bu l-budd. The short recension of the Arabic BwB, as mentioned, has Ÿlled the large gap resulting from the loss of parts 2B, 3 and 4 mainly with the “additional” stories S17 to S23. Of these, S17 has several parallels in the J¡takas, and is presumably taken (as Stern and Walzer have noted25) from the Arabic “book of the king with the grey hair and the dispute which he had with his ministers and the people of his kingdom”, now lost, but mentioned by an-Nad£m in his chapter on “the books of the Persians, Greeks, Indians and Arabs containing admonitions” etc.26 S19 is a doublet of the frame-story of the whole book (the prince who renounces the world after witnessing sickness, old age and death) and one of its sub-stories (S23), namely the story of the she-demon (Ð¥l, for rak™as£) and the sailors, has clear Buddhist antecedents.27 But the fact that this obviously secondary insertion contains genuinely Buddhist material underlines again the importance of distinguishing between the Buddhist elements in the framestory and the potentially Buddhist origin of some of the sub-stories. I add that Kuhn28 has identiŸed Indian parallels even for two of the many new sub-stories in Ibn µasd¡y’s Hebrew expanded reworking of BwB, but nobody, I think, would consider this to be evidence for the “authenticity” of Ibn µasd¡y’s version. There was obviously a fair amount of Buddhist narrative material in circulation in Arabic translation. The author of the long recension and the scribe who Ÿlled up the gap in the short recension, and even Ibn µasd¡y, centuries later, all had a battery of Arabic works of Indian origin at their disposal and they exploited these quite freely to esh out the story. 4. The “Book of B¥Ñ¡saf” An-Nad£m, the author of the Fihrist, the thematic catalogue of Arabic books available in the Baghdad bookshops towards the end of the 10th century, has a section on “the names of the books of the Indians containing fables, night-time-stories and narratives”,29 where he enumerates (among others) Kal£lah and Dimnah, the afore-mentioned “book of al-Budd”, “the 26 Stern and Walzer 1971, 4–6. an-Nad£m, ed. Flügel, 316; ed. Tajaddud, 378. 27 See Kuhn 1893, 81; Stern and Walzer 1971, 11. 28 Kuhn 1893, 81–82. 29 an-Nad£m, ed. Flügel, 305; ed. Tajaddud, 364. 25 On the sources of the Barlaam Romance 19 book of *B¥Ñ¡saf and Bilawhar”,30 and “the book of *B¥Ñ¡saf, a single book”.31 And in two other sections32 he mentions “the book of Bilawhar and B¥Ñ¡saf” as one of the works which the poet Ab¡n al-L¡¾iq£ (died ca. 815) “transmitted”, that is to say: versiŸed. Presumably the “book of B. and B.” (we note in passing the uctuating order of the two names) is substantially the work available to us as the long recension of the Arabic text; the reference to Ab¡n would seem to suggest that this work was in existence by the end of the 8th century. And I would propose that the “single” “Book of B¥Ñ¡saf ” is the authentic story of the autodidact Bodhisattva, essentially what we have now as parts 1, 4 and 5 of BwB (but leaving aside the fairly obvious interpolations in part 4), presumably a straightforward translation of a Sasanian Middle-Persian translation of some Buddhist Indian work. It would have described the birth of the Buddha, his isolation from the world, his encounter with sickness, old age and death, his temptation, the birth of his son, and his renunciation of marriage, followed by the account of his enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, his departure from his homeland, his preaching and his death. This was evidently quite a short work (perhaps Ÿfty-odd pages of the 286 of the Bombay edition), but it contained all the main episodes of the canonic life of the Buddha. This “Book of B¥Ñ¡saf” fell into the hands of a Muslim man of letters. He obviously liked the story of the prince who became a holy man, but he could not countenance the implication that he had obtained all this wisdom without a teacher and spiritual guide. And so he invented the Buddha’s teacher, the travelling ascetic Bilawhar. For the content of Bilawhar’s teaching he ransacked his library of Arabic narrative and didactic literature, among them one work of indubitably Indian origin (Kal£lah and Dimnah). Then he invented (or, as suggested above, adopted from some Christian source) the long-winded story of B¥Ñ¡saf’s debate with his father and with the false teacher R¡kis, inserting into this some extracts from the Arabic “Book of alBudd”. Then he returned to the “Book of B¥Ñ¡saf” for the story of the prince’s temptation, but eshed this out with a further extract from the “Book of al-Budd” (namely: L31) and some material of his own invention, and for the account of his enlightenment, his travels and his death. 30 Here, and in the next entry, the unpointed -d- of bwÑÒsf appears in both editions (and apparently in all the manuscripts) joined to the following letter, in effect as an unpointed -t-. 31 I assume that this should be vocalised as Kit¡bu B¥Ñ¡safa mufradun, ‘the book of B., a single (detached, isolated) book’, as opposed to a combined book dealing with both B¥Ñ¡saf and Bilawhar. Differently from Gimaret et al., I do not think this can mean ‘the book of B. alone’; for this one would surely expect ... mufradan or l-mufradi. 32 an-Nad£m, ed. Flügel, 119 (Kit¡bu bilawhara wa brdÒnyh) and 163 (Kit¡bu z-zuhdi wa brdÒsf); ed. Tajaddud, 132 (Kit¡bu bilawhara wa brdÒsf) and 186 (Kit¡bu bilawhara wa b¥d¡safa) François de Blois 20 Thus, the book of BwB, as we possess it today, is essentially a combination of a short, but genuine Buddhist account (translated from Middle Persian, and ultimately from some Indian language) of the life of the Buddha with a collection of stories and sermons taken from Arabic literary sources, whereby a small number of the stories derive ultimately from Buddhist or nonBuddhist Indian narrative works. But these have nothing to do with the Sasanian source, to say nothing of its Indian original. 5. The alleged Manichaean connection In conclusion it is necessary to say something about the alleged Manichaean origin (or Manichaean transmission) of the Bilawhar romance.33 The discoveries in Turfan have produced two texts which stand in some relationship to BwB. The Ÿrst of these to come to light was a substantial fragment of an Old Turkish version of what is clearly the story of the drunken prince who makes love to a corpse,34 one of the additional stories in the short recension of BwB (that is: S20), but it contains no trace of the frame story. Thus, although it is entirely possible that it is a fragment of a Turkish translation of BwB, it is just as likely that the manuscript contained only this one story, perhaps extracted from the short recension of the Arabic BwB, or perhaps taken from the unknown source which the compiler of the short recension used to Ÿll the lacuna in his master copy. By contrast, the fragments of a New Persian poetical composition in Manichaean script published by Henning in his article “Persian poetical manuscripts from the time of R¥dak£” of 1962 clearly belong to the story of (as they are called there) bylwhr and bwdysf. I have recently restudied this text in connection with my glossary of the New Persian texts in Manichaean script in the second volume of the Dictionary of Manichaean texts and I take the liberty of reiterating (and expanding on) some of what I wrote there.35 The larger fragment of the Persian poetical version found in Turfan (that is: M581) consists of an incomplete bifolio containing parts of 27 double verses. Henning located the verses appearing on the two sides of folio A (= vss. 1–13) in the account of Bilawhar’s departure, his return the next day and of his answer to B¥Ñ¡saf ’s question about his age, comparing the passage from p. 82,11 to p. 83,10 of the Bombay edition, that is: the little bit of narrative after story 15. The main basis for this is the rubric after verse 8, which speaks of the “return of Bilawhar” (bÒz Òmdn Óyg bylwhr), and the fact that the words in the following two verses (“[…] thereafter he did indeed 33 The Manichaean transmission of BwB is maintained in Henning 1957 and Henning 1962, more recently 34 also in the (largely derivative) papers by Asmussen 1966 and Klimkeit 2000. von Le Coq, 1911, 5–7. 35 de Blois and Sims-Williams 2006, 90–91. On the sources of the Barlaam Romance 21 come back, made […] and bowed to him; he seated himself [before him] and B¥Ñsaf said to him” etc.36) correspond fairly precisely with the wording at the beginning of p. 83 of the Bombay edition of BwB (“then he came back to him the next night and greeted him, and (B¥Ñ¡saf) returned the greeting; then he sat down, and B¥Ñ¡saf said” etc.37). We will discuss the placing of folio B in a moment. M9130 contains a tiny splinter of the same manuscript, published by Henning as vss. 28–33, apparently a fragment of one of the sub-stories; vs. 30 has in fact the word dÒstÒn, ‘story’. In vs. 33 Henning restored the words [s]bwd-I zw jwdÒg, ‘a jar separate from it’, rhyming with ]bš ÒÒ[šn]Òg, ‘familiar [with] its …’, and remarked that the only one of all the Barlaam stories into which these words Ÿt is the tale of the thieves who stole a jar (qullah), thinking that it contained gold, only to discover that it was Ÿlled with poisonous snakes, the Ÿfth of the “additional” stories (i.e. S21) that are found in the short recension of the Arabic book, but are missing in the long recension and its oÙshoots.38 In the preceding verse Henning considered two possibilities: First hr s¾ gw[n], ‘all three kinds’, rhyming with [jÒdw]gr byh[wn], ‘the sorcerer Bih¥n’, for which he compared the ‘false ascetic’ Òlbhwn who Ÿgures in the last part of the long recension. This indeed attractive proposal is not reconcilable with the surely even more attractive placing of the immediately following verse in the story of the jar of snakes. His alternative suggestion was to read (in vs. 32) hr s¾ gw[Ò], ‘all three witnesses’, rhyming with ..byh[yÒ], ‘without shame’, whereby Henning remarked that in this case as well “what is left of verse 32 fails to agree” with the proposed interpretation of vs. 33. But I wonder whether the reference to the three *witnesses might be connected with the fact that the ‘jar’ in the Arabic version is said (twice in the text) to have been ‘sealed’ (maxt¥mah). The gist of verses 32–33 could then perhaps be reconstructed as something along the lines of: [The vessel had been sealed in the presence of three persons and was stamped with the seals of] all three witn[esses.] [The thieves broke it open and plundered the gold] without sha[me.] [Then they caught sight of] a [j]ar, some distance from it. 36 The Ÿrst half-verse ends … az pas bi-¡maÑ n£z b¡z, the second ends … kard u burd [Ú-r¡ nam¡]z, and the Ÿrst legible words in the next line are: … bi-nšist u b¥Ñsaf-š guft. 37 Bombay ed., 83 = Gimaret 1972, 65: þumma Ó¡da Òilayhi l-q¡bilata fa ¾ayy¡hu wa radda Óalayhi þumma jalasa fa q¡la b¥Ñ¡safu …. Ibn B¡b¥yah 608 has: þumma Ó¡da l-¾ak£mu Òilayhi fa sallama Óalayhi wa daÓ¡ lah¥ þumma jalasa fa k¡na min duÓ¡Òih£ Òan q¡la …, where the syntactically parallel phrases “… greeted him and invoked blessings upon him …” corresponds more closely to the Persian text that does the long recension, with its change of subject in the middle of the phrase. 38 It can be found in Ibn B¡b¥yah, 632, and also (in Arabic and English) in Stern/Walzer 1971, 33, where qullah, ‘jar’, is inadequately rendered as ‘chest’. 22 François de Blois [As soon as they saw it they became] a[wa]re of its [splendid appearance.] I return now to the larger fragment and the two sides of folio B (= vss. 14–27 of Henning’s edition). Henning rather tentatively located them in the account of Bilawhar’s Ÿnal separation from his pupil, comparing the lines on the recto with Bombay edition, pp. 89–91, and those on the verso with Bombay edition pp. 123 sqq., that is to say: he located them in part 2B of the long recension. Since only a few lines can be missing between the pages it would be necessary to assume that the account was very much truncated. But there is not actually any real agreement in wording between the Persian and Arabic texts at this point.39 More signiŸcantly: if the verses on the smaller fragment really belong to one of the stories unique to the short recension one would hardly expect the larger fragment to contain a parallel to the account of Bilawhar’s departure which is unique to the long recension. If these verses do pertain to Bilawhar’s departure then one should search for parallels in the corresponding section of the short recension. In this case I would draw attention speciŸcally to verse 23: In the Ÿrst half-verse we have the concluding words: p]Òswx dÒdmt /p¡sux d¡Ñam-at/, clearly meaning (with Henning) “I have given answers to your [questions]”; in the second half-verse we have only: bkwšÒdmÞ /bu-kš¡Ñam-at/, which could of course mean (as Henning has it) “I have undone your [puzzles]”, but it could equally well mean “I have opened for you [the gates of wisdom]” or the like. One could compare the statement in the short recension that Bilawhar remained with his royal pupil “until he knew that he had opened for him the gate and showed him the path of truth”.40 The literal agreement is thus between bu-kš¡Ñam-at in the Persian (Ÿrst-person) account and fata¾a lah¥ in the Arabic (third-person) account. It would however have to be accepted either that the Persian poet has greatly expanded the very meagre account of Bilawhar’s departure in the short recension, or else that Ibn B¡b¥yah has radically abridged the account of this event which he found in his source and that this source is more faithfully represented by the Persian versiŸcation. With or without this last point, the observation that the Persian poetical version of the Barlaam romance read by the Manichaeans at Turfan apparently contained at least one of the “additional” stories (and also that another one of these is known in a Manichaean Turkish version, quite possibly deriving from this very poem) is of considerable portent for the literary history of the romance. It is chronologically conceivable that the Persian poet had his raw material directly from Ibn B¡b¥yah (who died in 991), but it is perhaps more likely that Ibn 39 As is correctly noted by Gimaret 1971a, 41–2. 40 Ibn B¡b¥yah 635: ¾att¡ Óarafa Òannah¥ qad fata¾a lahu l-b¡ba wa dallah¥ Óal¡ sab£li ™-™aw¡bi. On the sources of the Barlaam Romance 23 B¡b¥yah and the unknown Persian poet both used a common (Arabic, Islamic) source, namely the short recension of BwB. The fact that some form of BwB was read by the Manichaeans in Turfan does not, of course, prove that the book is of Manichaean origin. We know that the Manichaeans were quite happy to make use of narrative materials of most diverse origin. But at the end of his already mentioned paper on the New Persian poetical texts in Manichaean script41 Henning took the “opportunity to draw attention to the Manichaean character of an important part of the ‘wisdom’ of the book as it appears in the Arabic texts, in spite of superŸcial islamicisation”, in particular in the passage on prophetology which we Ÿnd in part 2, between parables 9 and 10, “where the very wording compellingly recalls authentic Manichaean writing”. He then quotes (in Arabic only) two short pieces from the text. The Ÿrst passage can be translated as follows:42 “The principle of the preaching of the Truth has constantly come in the course of time and the Truth43 has constantly appeared with God’s apostles and messengers in past, primal ages in various languages.” The second passage is taken somewhat out of context. I add therefore (in italics) the Ÿrst part of the sentence and continue (in roman) with the words cited by Henning:44 “But we do not oppose any of these people unless we have the clear proof and the authentic textual references from the books that have remained in their hands and the legal prescriptions which they themselves read.” The idea that God has revealed the same true religion again and again down the ages through different prophets and different, equally valid, prophetic books, is indeed one that occurs now and then in Manichaean writings, but it is also absolutely main-stream Islamic doctrine, expressed often enough in the QurÒ¡n, for example in the many passages where the Muslim scripture evokes “those to whom the Book was given before you”, that is: the Jews and the Nazoraeans. The striking similarity, in this matter, and in a few others, between Manichaeism and Islam is the result (as I have argued elsewhere45) of the fact that these two religions share a common substratum in Jewish Christianity (Elchasaism in the case of Manichaeism, Nazoraeism in the case of Islam). There is consequently no reason why this passage should not be the work of the Muslim redactor of the long version of BwB. 41 Henning 1962, 93. 42 Bombay ed., 60; Gimaret 1972, 48–9 (where the text is emended on the basis of Ibn B¡b¥yah; I translate the wording of the Bombay edition). 43 al-¾aqq; wrong in Henning. 44 Bombay ed., 61; Gimaret 1972, 49 (again with a slightly different reading). 45 de Blois 2002, and (in greater detail) de Blois 2004, following in part Harnack 1909–10, ii, 529–38. François de Blois 24 In short, I do not believe that there is any reason to assume any contribution of Manichaeans to the composition or transmission on the book of BwB. What we have is an originally Buddhist work, translated Ÿrst into Sasanian Middle Persian,46 presumably at about the same time as Kal£lah and Dimnah, and then from Middle Persian into Arabic, but subsequently reworked and greatly expanded by a Muslim author. The Manichaeans in Turfan knew the work in its Islamic guise. The New Persian versiŸcation is evidently based on the short recension, that is to say, a secondary Islamic reworking of the already Islamic long recension, and the Turkish fragment, if it even belongs to the Bilawhar story, derives from the same short recension.47 The general tenure of the book of BwB has nothing to do with Manichaeism; rather it is that of Islamic mysticism; more precisely: that of the older form of suŸsm, with its emphasis on asceticism (zuhd ) and personal piety (Óib¡dah), as opposed to the later form (after Ibn al-ÓArab£), which was concerned mainly with ontological speculation (wa¾datu l-wuj¥d). In the end, when the Buddha became a Christian saint, it was only after he had Ÿrst been reborn as a Muslim mystic. Bibliography Asmussen, J. (1966): “Der Manichäismus als Vermittler literarischen Gutes.” In: Temenos, 2, 5–21. de Blois, F. (1990): BurzÚy’s voyage to India and the origin of the book of Kal£lah wa Dimnah. London. —— (2002): “Na™r¡n£ (NazÚraios) and ¾an£f (ethnikos): Studies on the religious vocabulary of Christianity and of Islam.” In: BSOAS 65, 1–30. —— (2004): “Elchasai – Manes – Mu¾ammad.” In: Der Islam, 81, 31–48. —— and Sims-Williams, N. (2006): Dictionary of Manichaean texts. Volume II: Texts from Iraq and Iran. Turnhout. Gimaret, D. (1971a): Le livre de Bilawhar et B¥d¡sf selon la version arabe ismaélienne. Geneva and Paris. —— (1971b): “Traces et parallèles du Kit¡b Bilawhar wa B¥d¡sf dans la tradition arabe.” In: Bulletin d’études arabes, 24, 97–133. —— (1972): (ed.) Kit¡b Bilawhar wa B¥d¡sf, Beyrouth. 46 The interpretations (inevitably speculative) that I have proposed in the course of this paper for the corrupted Indian proper names all operate with the assumption that the Arabic BwB was translated from a book in Pahlavi (not Manichaean) script. 47 Even the passage about Bilawhar’s age re ected in the larger fragment of the Persian versiŸcation (where Bilawhar claims that he is only twelve years old, because ‘age’ means ‘life’, and he has only been truly alive for the twelve years since his enlightenment) betrays an Arabic source, resting, as it does, on a pun between the two meanings of the Arabic word Óumr. François de Blois 25 Harnack, A. (1909–10): Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, vierte neu durchgearbeitete und vermehrte Auflage, Tübingen. Henning, W.B. (1957): “Die älteste persische Gedichthandschrift: eine neue Version von Barlaam und Joasaph.” In: Akten des 24. internationalen Orientalisten-Kongresses München 1957, Wiesbaden, 305–7; reprinted in his Selected papers II, 541–3. —— (1962): “Persian poetical manuscripts from the time of R¥dak£.” In: A Locust’s leg: studies in honour of S.H. Taqizadeh, London, 89–104; reprinted in his Selected papers II, 559–74. —— (1977): J. Duchesne-Guillemin, J. (ed.), Selected Papers. I. Téhéran – Liège 1977 (AcIr 14. Hommages et Opera Minora 5). Ibn B¡b¥yah: Kam¡lu d-d£ni wa tam¡mu n-niÓmah, ed. ÓAl£ Akbar al-GhaÙ¡r£, Qum 1405 h./1984–5. Klimkeit, H.-J. (2000): “Das Weiterleben manichäischer ErzählstoÙe im Islam.” In: R.E. Emmerick, W. Sundermann, P. Zieme (eds.), Studia Manichaica, IV. Internationaler Kongreß zum Manichäismus, Berlin, 14.–18. Juli 1997, Berlin, 366–373. Kuhn, E. (1884): “Der Mann im Brunnen. Geschichte eines indischen Gleichnisses.” In: Festgruss an Otto von Böthlingk, Stuttgart. —— (1893): “Barlaam und Joasaph. Eine bibliographisch-literargeschichtliche Studie.” In: Abhandlungen d. phil.-phil. Classe d. k. Bayr. Akad. d. Wissenschaften, Bd. 20, Abth. 1, 1–85 (also separately as Denkschriften, 67, 1894). von Le Coq, A. (1911): Türkische Manichaica aus Chotscho, I. APAW 1911, Nr. 6, Berlin. an-Nad£m: Kit¡bu l-Fihrist, ed. G. Flügel, Leipzig 1871; ed. R. Tajaddud, Tehran, n.d. [circa 1971]. Sims-Williams, N. (2004): “The Parthian abstract sufŸx -yft.” In: Indo-European perspectives, Studies in honour of Anna Morpurgo Davies, Oxford, 539–547. Stern, S.M. and Walzer, S. (1971): Three unknown Buddhist stories in an Arabic version, Oxford. Sundermann, W. (1992): [Review of de Blois 1990] OLZ, 87, col. 287–9. Zotenberg, H. (1886): “Notice sur le Livre de Barlaam et Joasaph.” In: Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale, 38/1. On the sources of the Barlaam Romance 26 A Tentative Genealogy of the Book of Barlaam and Josaphat [An Indian Life of the Buddha] [Sasanian Middle Persian translation] [Arabic translation: “Book of B¥Ñ¡saf”] Arabic “Book of Bilawhar and B¥Ñ¡saf” (long recension) with copious insertions from Arabic literary sources, some of which are translations from Middle Persian [Arabic versiŸcation by Ab¡n al-L¡¾iq£, d. ca. 815] Arabic BwB (short recension) with seven interpolated stories (quoted in extenso by Ibn B¡b¥yah, d. 991) Arabic epitome Georgian Persian versiŸcation (Halle fragment) Balavariani (Turfan fragment) Old Turkish story of Prince and corpse (Turfan fragment) Greek “Barlaam and Ioasaph” trans. by Euthymius (d. 1028) Hebrew “Book of the Prince and the Ascetic” by Ibn µasd¡y (d. 1240) Latin “Barlaam and Josaphat” Persian paraphrase and other Christian versions by Š¡m£ (ca. 1400) Persian translation by Majlis£ (d. 1699)