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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

the would-be original Syriac text, and no mention of the novel itself occurs before the 11th cent.
The result of Peeters's investigations, with which I fully agree, is that the legendary biography of
Śākyamuni translated into Pahlavī about A. D. 500 (?) was later retranslated into Arabic, then into
Georgian; the Georgian (or possibly the Arabic) version was used as a basis c. A.D. 1000 by the Greek
author of the novel of Barlaam and Ioasaf, itself soon translated into Latin as the history of Barlaam
and Iosaphat. A Persian version of the biography, possibly translated from the Arabic, but more
probably independent of it and based on the Pahlavī, has been partly published by Ol'denburg
(ZVOIRAO, IV, 229-265); a fragment in Turkish found by Le Coq (Türkische Manichaica aus
Chotscho, I [1912], 5-7) has been identified by Ol'denburg (in Radlov, Alttürk. Studien VI, Izv.
Ak. Nauk., 1912, 779-782) as belonging to the same recension of the biography as the Persian text.
Under «Avenir», I have called attention to the final -r in the Arabic and Greek forms of that name,
and not -s as in Georgian, as an indication in favour of the dependence of the Greek upon the
Arabic instead of the Georgian. Of course, it is the Arabic writing which accounts for the alter-
nation , b- and ; i- (y-) at the beginning of Bodisaf > Yodisaf; but the form is also altered in the
Georgian Iodasaf, so that, in so far as the initial is concerned, either the Georgian or the Arabic may
account for the i- of 'Ιωάσαφ. But in the rest of the Greek name, there is perhaps another indication
of an Arabic, and not Georgian prototype. Kuhn, as I said above, explained 'Ιωάσαφ through a
misreading in Greek for which there is no support in the Mss. On the contrary, a form يوسف, Yoasaf
is actually given in one case by the Fihrist (cf. Hommel, in Verhandl. d. VII. Intern. Orient.-
Congresses... 1886, Vienna, 1888, Semit. Sekt., 119); if the author of the Greek novel had an Arabic
prototype with the same reading, he could find no better rendering than 'Ιωάσαφ.
In 1888, Sachau (Alberuni's India, I, xxxiii) still expressed some surprise at the equivalence
Bodhisattva ≥ Bōdāsāf, because « there is no law in Indian phonetics which admits the change of
sattva to saf ». The texts discovered in Central Asia provide us now with many instances of bodhi-
sattva occurring in Buddhist Turkish texts as bodistv, bodastv and bodisavt (cf. Bang and von
Gabain, Analyt. Index, in SPAW, 1931, 474). Probably Bodastv is a scribe's mistake; I hesitate
to connect it with the Arabic -ā- form Bōdāsāf. As for bodistv (= bodisāte) > bodisut (= bodisāvt),
it is a metathesis of a type quite common in Iranian and Turkish languages; and it is of course
bodisāvt, not bodisātv, which has given Bōdāsāf. As far as I can remember, the form in -sāv
(> -sāf), not -sāvt or -sātv, has only been noticed once in a Turkish text, and the text is of Mani-
chaean origin (cf. Le Coq, Ein christl. und ein manich. Ms.-Fragment, in SPAW, 1909, 1204-1205).
This leads me to speak of the only point on which I feel inclined to dissent from Peeters's
views, that is the part possibly played by the Manichaeans in spreading the legend of Śākyamuni's
life through Western and Central Asia. Peeters's attitude is negative. On the other hand, in
1917-1918, Alfaric not only maintained that the Manichaeans had helped in the diffusion of Buddha's
legend, but that Mānī had used and transmitted to his disciples a gnostic life of Śākyamuni (JA,
1917, II, 269-288; Rev. d'hist. des Relig., Vol. 78 [1918], 227-235; reprinted in Les écritures mani-
chéennes, II, 211-219).
Without sharing Alfaric's extreme opinions, I think that the part played by the Manichaeans
cannot be dismissed so easily in this connection. While the same tale occurs in practically the same
words in the old Persian version of Bilōhar and Bōdāsāf and in a manuscript discovered at Turfan by