The Buddha legend: a footnote from an Arabic source

Abstract

kitdb Ba/ilawhar wa-Buddsaf tells the story of the Buddha and his teacher. A discussion of the sources, existing versions of the work and its transmission to the West appears in Stern and Walzer's Three Unknown Buddhist Stories in an Arabic Version which was published in London in 1971. story or-in the words of Stern and Walzer-a form of the was translated first into Persian, then into Arabic, Georgian and finally Greek, as the legend of Barlaam and Joasaph (page 1). Although the secondary literature dealing with as popular a subject as the legend of the Buddha is rich and plentiful, Stern and Walzer introduce important new material in Arabic by reproducing and carefully editing three stories which occur in the kitdb Kamdl al-dTn wa-tamdm al-ni'ma fi ithbdt al-ghayba wa-kashf al-hayra (lithography Tehran 1301/1883) by the well-known 3/10th century author Ibn Babuya (F. Sezgin, GAS 1/1967/548ff.; Agha Buzurg Tihrani, al-Dharr'a ild tasdnlf al-ShT'a, Beirut 1983, 2/283 and 18/137 for variants in title). Stern and Walzer also used the Manchester and Berlin Mss. (see page 12). In their Introduction, Stern and Walzer trace the development of the Buddha legend and describe the historical background of its various translations and the extant manuscripts. They also list a number of other studies on the topic (see pages 1-3; in addition the following references are also useful: D.M. Lang, in: El2 s.n.; id., in: BSOAS 20/1957/389-407, and id.: Wisdom of Balavhar: a Christian legend of the Buddha, London/New York 1957, reviewed by S.M. Stern, in: BSOAS 22/1959/149-152). Buddha legend also appears in the celebrated kitdb Bilawhar wa-Buddsf (sic!) which has been edited by D. Gimaret in Beirut in 1972 on the basis of four manuscripts to which he had access, including the Bibliotheque Nationale manuscript of Ibn Babiya's kitdb Kamtl al-dTn cited above (see his Introduction pages 11-20). Gimaret also refers to an extensive section which deals with the legend of Balawhar and Budasaf in the Bihdr al-anwdr (lithography Tehran 1304/1886-87, 17/220-244) by the 11/17th century Persian scholar al-MajlisT. In the course of research on the kitdb Faraj al-mahmum Jt ta'rlkh 'ulama' al-nujum, a treatise on astrology and astrologers written by the well-respected ShFl scholar Ibn Tawis (d. 664/1266), I came across a shortened version of the story (fols. 126a-b of the Mashhad manuscript listed by A. Ma'ani in his Fihrist-i kitdbkhdna-i mubdrak-i Asitdn-i quds-i Rizavi, 8, Mashhad 1350/1971, pages 250-251, section 318) quoted in Ibn Babiiya's kitdb Kamdl al-dmn (page 352 = Stern & Walzer pages 28f.). This version presents striking similarities with the account which Stern and Walzer entitled The prince who flees his home and then refuses to marry a princess (pages 28-37). Indeed, the likeness is such that, save a few words and expressions, one can safely