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As it has traveled, the Buddhalegend has carried
complex messages and sets of ideas, among which is the kinship of
living beings. When the story made its way to Europe in the medieval
period in the form of Barl¯m and Josaphat, however, many of
its messages were removed, and the kinship of living beings was one
of the casualties. Concentrating on a particular episode in Barlaam
and Josaphat, I show how the kinship of living beings was progressively
deleted. I then suggest that this removal was based, in part, on an
historical practice used for the detection and repression of Manichaeism:
the killing test. With the help of this mechanism of inquisition and
persecution, the Buddhalegend was prevented, until the nineteenth
century, from transmitting one of its key messages to the West.
Introduction
The story of the Buddha situates the human
dilemma and the solution to that dilemma within a broad context
of suffering that includes the nonhuman. Human beings are not
alone in their suffering, and they are not the only ones whose
suffering matters. If narratives are carriers — transnational
and transcultural — of values and ideas, then the Buddhalegend
has been a carrier of a concept of the kinship of living beings.
Yet, when the story first
went west across the Middle East and into Europe in the medieval
period, it went after a metamorphosis — after it had been transformed
into the story of Barla¯m and Josaphat. The kinship of living
beings was one of the casualties in this transformation;
episodes in the story that suggested close human kinship with the nonhuman
were removed.
In this paper, I shall take as symbolic of this removal
the elimination of a narrative section I shall call "the sheep episode."
The episode is found in the Ismaili Arabic text — the earliest complete version
of Barla¯m and Josaphat to have survived — but is missing from the Balavariani,
the first surviving Christian version of the tale. I believe the removal of
the kinship of living beings from the textual tradition as the story was received
into Christendom was systematic and deliberate, and I shall make the point
by linking the sheep episode to an historical practice, the "killing
test," which was used to discover heresy. I shall argue that the sheep
episode was probably removed because it was regarded as heretical — most likely
Manichaean. If my hypothesis is correct, the reformulation of Barla¯m and
Josaphat for European readers was bound up with historical practices of
inquisition and persecution.
There are many ways the human and the nonhuman may be construed
as kin. I shall therefore begin by outlining the Indian Buddhist understanding (non-Maha¯ya¯na, for the most part) of the kinship of living beings, and I shall
give evidence of the Buddhalegend's support of this concept. I shall then look at the concept of kinship that remains in the oldest version of Barla¯m
and Josaphat — the Ismaili Arabic version — while paying special attention
to the sheep episode. I shall indicate how the episode was removed from the
textual tradition, and I shall ask why this elimination may have occurred.
This process will involve giving evidence of the historical practice of the
killing test and asking what the test meant for its victims and its users.
The Buddhalegend and the Kinship of Living Beings
The phrase "kinship of living
beings" will, in this article, refer to an intimate, five-fold relatedness
of all living beings that are capable of feeling (that are sentient). This
category of beings includes humans, transhumans (devas and so forth), and
animals (mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, and insects), with plants, especially
trees, as borderline cases on which varying views may be found in Buddhist
texts.1 The five dimensions of kinship
are metaphysical, affective, epistemic, moral, and soteriological.
Metaphysical: Human and nonhuman living beings have strongly linked identities
and destinies.
We humans, according to Indian Buddhism, possess
a set of characteristics that distinguishes us from animals, and that makes
the killing of a human being a graver offence than the killing of an animal.
2 There is, to this extent, a hierarchy of value.
However, the ontological distinction between the human and the nonhuman is
a soft one. Not only do animals share with us crucial characteristics, such
as the ability to suffer, but also we ourselves are beings who are only temporarily
human. Multilevel rebirth, the central metaphysical grounding of our connectedness
with other beings, involves our continual entry into different life-conditions.
Our repeated wandering back and forth between human and nonhuman forms mocks
any attempt to establish strong boundaries between the two categories.
The Buddhalegend gives a position of great importance to
the concept of rebirth into different conditions of sentience. One of the
key noetic experiences the Buddha has during his enlightenment is the vision
(usually credited to his development of the divya-cak?us, or "divine
eye") of beings passing successively through different states of sentience,
human and nonhuman, according to the quality of their moral deeds.3
The placement of this vision within the Buddha's enlightenment is the strongest
possible affirmation of a metaphysics of commonality.
Affective: We feel, and ought to feel, empathy for nonhuman beings.
The Bodhisattva — I shall in this paper use the term
to refer to the being who eventually becomes S´a¯kyamuni Buddha — is characterized
by his extraordinary sensitivity, which is the result of many lifetimes of
virtuous action. This sensitivity includes not only the ability to sense the
hidden dangers of the world but also the ability to sense the suffering of
others, including the nonhuman others caught with us in a common tragedy.
The Buddhalegend has a repertoire of incidents that it utilizes, with varying
degrees of intensity and emphasis in different versions, to make this point.
Separate narrative incidents that involve nonhuman beings, including sheep,
geese, oxen, an elephant, and various small field creatures, allow this point
to be made.4
The Prince's encounter with a ploughed field is perhaps
the most important example of such incidents. In the Buddhacarita, the encounter
is a sort of supplement to the usual four signs and allows the full extent
of the Bodhisattva's sensibility to be demonstrated. When he saw the ground in this state, with the young grass
torn up and scattered by the ploughs and littered with dead worms, insects,
and other creatures, he mourned deeply as at the slaughter of his own kindred
[sva-jana]. And as he observed the ploughmen with their bodies discoloured
by wind, dust, and the sun's rays, and the oxen in distress with the labour
of drawing, the most noble one felt extreme compassion. Then alighting from his horse, he walked slowly over the
ground, overcome with grief. And as he considered the coming into being and
the passing away of creation, he cried in his affliction, "How wretched
this is."5 The sense of kinship experienced by the Bodhisattva
in the parallel incident described in the Fo Pen Hsing Chi Ching, a
lengthy version of the Buddhalegend transmitted from Gandhara to China in
the sixth century C.E., is very similar: "his heart was filled with grief,
as a man would feel who saw his own household bound in fetters."6 The kinship of living beings expressed in both of these passages comes
in the immediacy of feeling.
Epistemic: Increasing empathy for the nonhuman signifies increasing perception.
Sensitivity, according to the Buddhalegend, is not
a matter of mere affect but an aspect of growing awareness. It has an epistemic
dimension. To be appropriately sensitive to danger and suffering is to perceive
something that is. To incorporate this perception properly is to have knowledge
and intelligence. The entire encounter with the prerenunciation signs — including
the vision of the ploughed field — is a cognitive experience that leads to
the raising of questions about existence. The questions are eventually given
answers in a further cognitive experience, the enlightenment, where the connectedness
of human and nonhuman life, through karma and rebirth, is directly perceived.7
Moral: Nonhuman sentient beings are part of our moral universe.
Feeling and knowing that other sentient beings suffer
as we do, and believing (it is beyond most of us to verify this personally)
that we are ontologically linked in transmigration, we refrain from hurting
them. The prohibition of killing and injuring nonhuman sentient life was characteristic
of Buddhism in India from very early times until the age of its decline, as
attested not only in Buddhist texts but also in other sources, from the third
century B.C.E. As´okan rock edicts,8 to the eleventh century C.E. Hindu story collection,
the Katha¯saritsa¯gara.9 As far as the Buddhalegend is concerned, As´vagho?a stands
out for the succinctness of his statement of the position. When King Bimbisa¯ra
tries to persuade the Bodhisattva that he should carry out animal sacrifices,
the Bodhisattva replies: As for your saying that for the sake of dharma I
should carry out the sacrificial ceremonies which are customary in my family
and which bring the desired fruit, I do not approve of sacrifices; for I do
not care for happiness which is sought at the price of others' suffering.
For it does not befit the man of compassionate heart to kill another being,
who is helpless, out of a desire for a profitable outcome.10 The moral response to nonhuman beings promoted in
the Buddhalegend is not a purely negative one (refrain from killing, refrain
from hurting), but extends to the idea of protection and care — to actively
seeking the welfare of the other. In several versions of the Buddhalegend,
but most forcefully in the Fo Pen Hsing Chi Ching, a story is told
of a youthful dispute between the Bodhisattva and his vicious cousin Devadatta
over a wounded bird. Devadatta shoots a goose with his bow as it flies overhead.
The Bodhisattva picks it up, soothes it, removes the arrow, tends the wound,
and refuses to give the bird to his cousin. Devadatta is outraged and insists
the goose be given to him. He has the right of possession, he says, because
he took the bird first. The Bodhisattva replies that he took it long before
Devadatta: he took it many lifetimes ago when he had the aspiration for enlightenment
and drew all living beings into his care.11
Soteriological: The liberation of nonhuman sentient beings is a possibility;
moreover, human liberation depends on appropriate action toward the nonhuman
The doctrine of multi-level rebirth, verified in
the Buddha's enlightenment, makes it evident that humanity is merely one state
that living creatures can pass through as they wander through the transmigratory
process. Not only humans can become liberated, but all those involved in the
process.
That we humans impede our own spiritual progress if we
injure living beings is, of course, clear from the fact that the first moral
precept is directed against the taking of the life of sentient beings. The
point is also made in numerous textual statements and is implied in many episodes
in the Buddhalegend. Another passage from the Fo Pen Hsing Chi Ching
may be taken as representative of the position. The passage is especially
interesting because of its assumption of the kinship of living beings and
because of its reference to the sacrifice of a sheep — a motif that will interest
us later. A group of brahmanical ascetics tells the Bodhisattva about
a king who, in order to obtain a favourable birth, performed a sacrifice to
the gods in which many living beings were killed. When the ascetics defend
this act as a practice handed down by religious tradition the Bodhisattva
questions them: "How can you use the word 'religion' [fa, probably
for dharma] for the infliction of suffering on others? If your body
is smeared with filth and you scrub it with filth does it come clean? If your
body is covered with blood and you wash it in blood does it come clean? It
is not possible to make progress in religion by practising irreligion."
"It is indeed possible."
"On what basis?"
"On the basis of the Vedas, spoken by the sages of
by-gone times."
"What do they say?"
"If people perform sacrifices to the gods this is to
be called religion."
"Let me ask you about a matter in the realm of everyday
action. If you make progress in religion by killing a sheep and sacrificing
it to the gods, why not kill your own beloved family and offer it to the gods?
Reasoning thus, I know that killing a sheep and offering it in sacrifice is
without merit. You think as you do because your religion is confused."12
Notice that the author is not interested in arguing
for the kinship of living beings: he or she assumes it. The passage, very
typical of Indian Buddhist literature in its criticism of animal sacrifice,
makes it clear that spiritual progress is incompatible with the injury of
living beings. The five-faceted model of the kinship of living beings
as set forth here rests on four convictions that lie at the foundation of
the Buddhalegend and are characteristic of Indian Buddhism generally: (a)
the condition of sentient beings, not the condition of human beings, is the
proper object of analysis; (b) suffering is not a fact of mere human life
but of the life of sentient beings generally; (c) just as the suffering on
which we are to brood includes the suffering of other beings, so too the questioning
to which suffering gives rise includes as object the natural world generally;
(d) enlightenment — the final fulfillment of our questioning — engages and
illumines the suffering condition of the natural world generally. The Buddhalegend's view of the kinship of living beings
was by no means the standard one in all of the regions and cultures reached
by the story. With the possible exception of a few stories in the Chuang
Tzu, for example, there was little that corresponded to this view in the
literature of classical China. Curiously, however, when the Chinese received
the Buddhalegend (which they did in about eleven versions)13
their translations do not seem to have diluted, removed, or disguised the
kinship of living beings. They retained it and made it accessible to Chinese
readers. The journey of the story to the West was more complex.
The Kinship of Living Beings and Its Journey to the West
The Buddhalegend traveled to the West in two waves.
The second wave, to which, for example, Edwin Arnold's English life of the
Buddha, The Light of Asia,14belongs, resulted from European colonialism
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Missionaries, orientalists, and
colonial functionaries gathered the elements of the Buddhalegend that they
found in their particular region and published them, while popularizers such
as Arnold carried the story to larger audiences. Although all of these people
had their own agendas, the story was transmitted in reasonably intact forms
to the West, and the kinship of living beings comes through powerfully in
several of their works. In The Light of Asia, for instance, this kinship
is explicitly named and celebrated.15 The Buddhalegend's first journey to the West was quite
different. When medieval Europe received the tale, the Buddha had been transformed
into a Christian saint who converts Indian pagans to Christianity. Called
Barla¯m and Josaphat, this retelling of the story enjoyed wide popularity
in Western Europe from about the eleventh to the sixteenth century. The story
arrived from the East in Arabic and was translated from Arabic into Georgian,
from Georgian into Greek, from Greek into Latin, and from Latin into the various
vernaculars (Spanish, French, English, German, and so on).16
In addition to its circulation as an autonomous text, it was included prominently
in Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend, one of the most widely read
books in Europe in the medieval period.17 There are two versions of Barla¯m and Josaphat
that are especially important for us. The "Ismaili Arabic" version is recognized as
the oldest complete version of the story to have survived.18Although it was preserved by the Ismaili community
it is not explicitly Muslim. It has been dated to 750-900 C.E., with a leaning
toward the earlier date.19 The Balavariani,20 the oldest Christian version of Barla¯m
and Josaphat, is in Old Georgian and is clearly based on an Arabic text
very similar to, though not identical with, the Ismaili Arabic version.21
The story has, however, undergone very significant changes and differs in
major respects from the Ismaili Arabic story. That most of these changes were
introduced at the time of translation into Georgian as part of the Christianization
of the text cannot be proven, but seems likely. Changes include the omission
of a great deal of material deriving from the Indian Buddhalegend. The Balavariani
appears to date from the ninth or tenth century C.E.22 As far as the European Barla¯m and Josaphat tradition
is concerned, the above two versions are not mere branches of the textual
tree: they form the trunk. The Balavariani was translated into Greek
by Saint Euthymius in the period 975-987 C.E.23,
and this text was soon (as early as 1047 C.E.) translated into Latin.24 The Latin versions became the main basis both
of the Barla¯m and Josaphat in the extremely popular Golden Legend
and of the numerous vernacular versions that appeared, in manuscript and in
printed form, over the next several centuries.25
What this means is that whatever the Balavariani omitted during its
reformulation of the Arabic story remained absent from that point on in the
European evolution of the tale. The kinship of living beings is one such omitted
concept.26
The Kinship of Living Beings in the Ismaili Arabic Version
The Ismail Arabic text retains far more features
of the Indian Buddhalegend than other surviving texts. For example, in the
Balavariani only the early part of the story retains elements obviously
derived from the Indian Buddhalegend, and even there, many of the elements
present in Buddhist versions of the story are missing. In the Ismaili Arabic
text, on the other hand, both the opening and ending sections of the story
have details characteristic of Buddhist versions of the tale, and even the
middle sections of the tale contain some Buddhist elements — including Buddhist
stories and direct reference to "al-Budd" (the Buddha). In contrast
to the sprinkling of Buddhalegend remnants found in the Balavariani,
there are, in the opening and ending sections of the Ismaili Arabic text,
dozens of distinct narrative elements inherited from the Buddhalegend or other
Indian Buddhist literature.27 What remains in the Ismaili Arabic text of the Buddhalegend's
concept of the kinship of living beings? We find no reference to transmigration
or to the idea that human beings have passed or will pass through the condition
of nonhuman at some point in their development. We find no explicit affirmation
of the kinship of living beings. We find no single incident in the text that
perfectly replicates any of the incidents in the Buddhalegend's repertoire
dealing with the relation of human to nonhuman — no incident of the disputed
goose, no field creatures, and so on. We do, however, have a strident vegetarianism
that regards the eating of meat with horror and situates the avoidance of
meat near the centre of the spiritual life;28 an apparent opposition to animal sacrifice;29 a series of animal tales in which animals
converse with each other and with human beings;30
and a small number of mysterious passages that seem to me to hint at a concept
of the kinship of living beings.31
I shall concentrate on one of these latter passages: the sheep episode.32 The story's protagonist, Prince Josaphat (actually "Budasaf"
in this early stage of the text, a name derived from "Bodhisattva"),
becomes unsatisfied with his father's sensual and violent religion. He is
drawn toward world renunciation. The King is worried that the Prince will
give up his royal heritage, so, on the advice of his astrologers, he makes
two attempts — I shall refer to these as "tests" because this is
what they obviously are to the implied author of the text — to seduce the
young man into worldly life. First, he surrounds him with beautiful women
who try to gain his attention and arouse his desire. Josaphat ignores the
women. Josaphat is then subjected to a second test. The astrologers
tell the King that if his son is to be drawn back to the world he must be
made to spill blood (Gimaret's translation from the Arabic: "ce garçon
ne s'attachera à nulle chose de ce monde, tant qu'il n'aura pas versé le sang").
Accordingly, his father and mother present him with a sheep and tell him to
cut its throat. They explain that the gods have graced them with many things,
including the Prince's birth, and they wish to have the boy kill the sheep
so that they may eat it as part of a ritual offering ("Nos dieux nous
ont comblés de leurs bienfaits, dirent-ils, et ils nous ont fait la grâce
de ta naissance. Nous voudrions donc manger une bête égorgée par toi.").
The Prince does not wish to participate. He objects that he is too sensitive
for such an act and that, moreover, the deed would constitute a great sin.
("Dispensez-moi de cela, dit Bûdâsf, j'y serais trop sensible, ce serait
pour moi une trop grande peine et un trop grand péché.") When his parents
insist that they will take on themselves whatever sin the acts involves, he
consents. With his father holding the head of the prostrate sheep and his
mother holding the feet, and with his left hand on the sheep's neck, he raises
the knife over the sheep. He then deliberately plunges the knife into his
own hand and faints. We begin our exploration of the significance of this passage
by looking for Buddhist parallels. I am not aware of any incident, either
in extant versions of the Buddhalegend or in Indian Buddhist literature more
widely, identical to this one. Still, there are certainly Buddhist literary
precedents. In the Buddhalegend itself, there are the passages referred to
earlier in this article, notably the Buddhacarita's references to animal
sacrifice (see also the reference in the Buddhacarita to the Ku¯?adanta
Suttanta, one of the most famous texts in the nika¯yas opposing
animal sacrifice),33and the argument
in the Fo Pen Hsing Chi Ching between the Bodhisattva and the brahmanical
ascetics in which the sacrifice of a sheep figures prominently. In Indian
Buddhist literature beyond the Buddhalegend, we encounter the motif of a virtuous
Prince who sees animal sacrifice taking place under his father's reign and
determines to put an end to it. The Prince may be forced into conflict with
his father, may criticize the father's (brahmanical) religion, and may clearly
associate the animal sacrifice promoted by the father's religion with a destiny
in the hells.34 But is there a precedent in Indian Buddhist literature
for structuring such episodes as tests? I know of only one such precedent,
the Lomasakassapa Ja¯taka.35 In this story, two friends go their separate
ways when they reach adulthood. The first becomes a king, while the second,
named Kassapa, becomes an ascetic. The god Indra, jealous of the spiritual
power of Kassapa and aiming to destroy his asceticism, entices the King (Kassapa's
boyhood friend) into persuading Kassapa to offer a sacrifice of animals. The
King uses his beautiful daughter to entrap Kassapa, who succumbs to her beauty
and agrees to offer sacrifice if he can have her as his wife. He approaches
the sacrificial pit with the sword used for the sacrifice, but at the last
moment, hearing the terrified cries of the animals, he comes to his senses.
Full of remorse, he says that he has done "a sinful deed" (pa¯pa-kammam)
36 and puts down his sword. He renounces both
the girl and the sacrifice and returns to the Himalayas where he spends his
time practicing meditations on loving-kindness toward all beings. In the frame
tale we are then told that Kassapa was none other than the Bodhisattva (who
would in a later life become our protagonist, the Prince). Note the elements that this text shares with that in the
Ismaili Arabic text: (a) a king, blinded by his devotion to his gods, puts
an ascetically minded man to the test, attempting to win him back to love
of the world; (b) he tries to accomplish his aim by drawing the ascetic into
infatuation with women and the spilling of the blood of an animal; (c) the
ascetic, so sensitive that he cannot bear to kill the animal, refuses at the
last moment to do so and thereby, from the point of view of ascetical religion,
passes the test; (d) the ascetic announces that he has in this way avoided
committing a serious "sin" or evil deed; (e) the ascetic is none
other than the being who will later reach enlightenment, a being explicitly
called the Bodhisattva in the Jataka tale and therefore being linked to Josaphat
(=Budasaf) in the Ismaili Arabic text. I doubt if the transmitters of the Ismaili Arabic text
were familiar with the Lomasakassapa Ja¯taka as such. However, it is
possible that they had inherited a set of more of less integrated Buddhist
values, ideas, and literary motifs, of which the Lomasakassapa Ja¯taka
is an instance, and that they creatively drew these values, ideas and motifs
together in a newly written passage involving a sheep. Does the sheep episode in the Ismaili Arabic text imply
a concept of the kinship of living beings? There is no easy answer to this.
An answer would have to be sought through a detailed analysis of the entire
text and, especially, a careful interpretation of several narrative incidents
in the text. For the purposes of the present article, I shall merely attempt
a summary of the text's position on each of the five aspects of the Buddhist
concept of the kinship of living beings outlined earlier. Firstly, there is no clear statement, during the sheep
episode or elsewhere in the Ismaili Arabic text, of a metaphysics of commonality.
Certain narratives and episodes may, however, imply such a metaphysics. There
is, for example, a story of parents who are forced to eat their own children.
37
The tale comes from Buddhist literature,38
and in its context in the Ismaili Arabic text seems to imply that when we
eat food we eat our own kin. Moreover, there are other tales, notably that
of the harmless vegetarian bird that is being hunted to extinction,39 that appear to suggest that the transmitters
of the text are being persecuted for their nonviolent beliefs and must dissimulate
and disguise their message to avoid extermination. This may explain the absence
of an explicit teaching of commonality. Secondly, the affective aspect of the kinship of living
beings is clearly indicated in Josaphat's statement that he is too sensitive
("j'y serais trop sensible") to kill the sheep. He feels too deeply;
he cannot bring himself to do the act and would rather suffer the pain of
the knife himself. Thirdly, the text values knowledge as a means to salvation
and gives it a higher place than subsequent versions of Barla¯m and Josaphat,
where faith comes to increasing prominence.40 In this it is, of course, retaining a key
element of the Buddhalegend. Knowledge is personified in the ascetics, such
as Barla¯m, who in the text represent true religion, and they are precisely
the ones who are strict vegetarians and who, like Josaphat in the sheep episode,
decline to participate in animal sacrifice. Although it is nowhere said explicitly,
the clear implication is that the sensitivity Josaphat demonstrates in his
reaction to the sheep is not merely a matter of correct feeling but of correct
seeing. Fourthly, as for the morality of the killing of animals,
Josaphat is not content to say that he cannot kill the sheep because he is
too sensitive; he also says that it is a sin ("un trop grand péché"). Finally, it is obvious, soteriologically, that if killing
nonhumans is a sin it is an impediment to the religious progress of the one
doing the killing. We cannot go further than this and say that salvation or
liberation is available to nonhuman sentient beings. The text neither affirms
nor denies this. In short, the Ismaili Arabic text represents a midpoint
in the erasure of the Buddhalegend's message on the kinship of living beings.
A good deal of the message is gone; a substantial portion remains. It will
be left to the next phase of textual transmission to complete the erasure.
The Absence of the Kinship of Living Beings in the Balavariani
The Balavariani, the first Christian version
of Barla¯m and Josaphat, omits numerous Buddhist elements in its telling
of the tale. By this point in the textual transmission, not only the lengthy
and bizarre references to al-Budd (who is portrayed in the Ismaili text as
a great prophet of God), but also such important events as the protagonist's
enlightenment under the bodhi tree, have been removed.41 As for the kinship of living beings, the Balavariani
lacks the crucial narratives and narrative fragments mentioned above. It has
not a hint of the sheep episode. Nor does it have the parable of the harmless
bird or the story of the cannibal parents. Of the Ismaili Arabic's animal
fables, few remain. Vegetarianism persists, but in a muted and Christianized
form. There are several references to the fact that Barla¯m and his company
of ascetics do not eat meat, but there is not the emphasis on this practice
that we find in the Ismaili Arabic text, and Barla¯m's vegetarianism does not
go beyond what was historically considered acceptable among mainstream Christian
ascetics.42" To put the matter briefly, not a single one
of the five aspects of kinship outlined earlier in this paper can be found
in the Balavariani — and we will not be surprised to find that none
will be found in the numerous European versions of Barla¯m and Josaphat
that are descended from the Balavariani. I have come to believe that the changes and omissions that
have erased the kinship of living beings are neither random nor mere side
effects of a drive for literary unity. I believe they are part of a larger,
systematic erasure of Buddhist elements carried out by the author/redactor
of the Balavariani, or at some stage of the textual transmission directly
preceding the formation of the Balavariani. This erasure seems to me
deliberate, not in the sense that the author/redactor identified the objectionable
elements as Buddhist, but in the sense that he or she identified them as misplaced
in a Christian tale and even as dangerous signs of heresy. But what is dangerous about the kinship of living beings,
and what is dangerous about the sheep episode specifically? For answers to
these questions, we must be willing to go outside the text. There is evidence
of actual, historical tests that parallel the sheep episode, and this evidence
suggests that Prince Josaphat's comportment in the episode would make him
a heretic — most likely a Manichaean — in the eyes of the Christians who received
the story of Barla¯m and Josaphat.
The Sacrifice Test, the Food Test, and the Killing Test
There are three types of tests whose historical use is
attested and that could have informed the reading and reception of the sheep
episode. All three have a common basic structure. A principle crucial to the
identity of the tested person is selected by the tester. The tested person
is challenged to relinquish this principle, thereby relinquishing his or her
identity and going over to a new identity. The first sort of test has been called the sacrifice
test. It is amply illustrated in Christian martyrdom literature, and the
events that inspired that literature, deriving from the time of the Roman
Empire of the first to the fifth centuries C.E. Christians were pressured
to participate in the Roman sacrificial cult.43
For the tester, loyalty to the gods, to the emperor, and to the Roman state
were all simultaneously tested. For the Christian being tested, loyalty to
God and to the Christian religion and community were tested. The Christian
who refused to participate — who failed the test from the point of view of
the tester and passed it from the point of view of the tested — could expect
to lose the physical body through execution but to win the crown of martyrdom.
The literature in which the test appears fictionalizes enthusiastically, drawing
on motifs established early, but there is no doubt that actual tests and actual
martyrdoms occurred.44 Now, our Ismaili Arabic text is stoutly monotheistic. It
denounces polytheism and idolatry,45
linking them to love of this dreadful world that is under the power of Satan.
It shows people being tortured and executed for refusing to go over to the
polytheism of the ruler of the realm.46 Because
Josaphat's parents wish their son to take part in an act of sacrifice to their
gods, it is reasonable to guess that part of the immorality of the act of
sacrifice, for the transmitters of the Arabic text, derives from its participation
in idolatry. Josaphat's refusal to sacrifice to the gods indicates his growing
dissatisfaction with the religion of his family and his quest for a better
form of religion. In our story, however, the immediate objective proposed
by the king's advisors is the spilling of blood by the boy. This is the act
that will ruin his renunciatory spirit. We hear about sacrifice to the gods
only when the boy's parents rationalize the act to him. We will also remember
that in the sacrifice test as recorded in Christian martyrdom literature referred
to above, the tested person does not actually kill the victim. The tested
person is merely pressured to taste of the already immolated victim.47 There is, in this literature, very little
interest in the death of the sacrificed animal. Most important of all, if the test in the Arabic text were
read by Christians as an sacrifice test, there would have been no need to
omit it. Such tests were well known in Christian literature, and Josaphat's
refusal to sacrifice would have been praised. We therefore cannot rest content
with the sacrifice test as an interpretive key to the episode, whatever it
might add to our understanding. The second kind of test that needs to be considered is
the food test. Diet has often been a visible sign of religious and
cultural identity. Purity, sacrality, loyalty, and group membership — with
all the accumulated weight of scripture, community, and tradition — may be
put at stake in the dietary choice. The particular food tests in which we
are interested here are those that involve abstention from meat. In Christian asceticism, abstention from meat was common
from early times, often in association with abstention from alcohol. Even
the most extreme forms of vegetarianism — such as grazing on uncultivated
plants — can be attested for some Christian sects.48
A variety of Biblical texts was used in support of vegetarianism but, besides
the linking of meat in the early Christian period with idolatrous sacrifices,
the two most common reasons given to support abstention were the association
of meat with pleasure, luxury, and wealth and the alleged contribution of
meat to concupiscence.49 Strict practice
of this form of abstention was associated mainly with the spiritual elite
rather than with the laity. Abstention from meat was an ambiguous symbol for mainstream
Christians because such abstention had been associated from an early period
with systems rejected as heretical, such as Marcionism and Manichaeism. These
groups took their vegetarianism and their asceticism seriously and linked
them to an interpretation of the world that was unacceptable to Christian
orthodoxy as it gradually defined itself.50 Food tests were used at various times to identify Manichaeans.
Samuel Lieu tells us, for example, that the "Patriarch Timothy of Alexandria
(patriarch from 380-85) was so alarmed by the extent of Manichaean infiltration
into the ranks of the clergy and monastics that he instituted food-tests by
allowing monks to eat meat on Sundays and thereby singling out the Manichaeans
among them."51 In medieval Europe, it was especially as heresy became
a serious preoccupation of the church in the eleventh century that abstention
from meat became a major sign of deviance. In Aquitaine in 1018 C.E., in Monteforte
around 1028, in Chalons in the 1040s, and at Goslar in 1051, abstention from
meat was characteristic of condemned groups.52 Then, beginning in the twelfth century with
the rise of the Cathar movement, vegetarianism became an entrenched sign of
heterodoxy and was suspected by the Church of being an expression (as, indeed,
it was in the case of the more radical Cathar groups) of the proscribed doctrine
of transmigration.53 The medieval Church frequently called groups holding to
this practice Manichaeans, even though they had few of the beliefs associated
with the religion created by Mani. In constructing the dissidents as Manichaeans,
the Church was able to mobilize the writings of the Church fathers, especially
Augustine, against them. Avoidance of meat became a dangerous practice for
religious groups, even when it had no connection to transmigration and other
condemned doctrines. Could it be the eating of meat, then, that is crucial to
the reading of the Arabic text? Josaphat's parents do mention eating the flesh
of the sheep ("Nous voudrions donc manger une bête égorgée par toi"),
and the text explicitly supports a strict vegetarianism. Yet, while this interpretation
enriches our understanding, it seems not to get at the heart of the issue.
We return to the fact that it is the spilling of blood that is said to be
the crucial matter. While the eating of meat can be carried out by the parents,
the killing of the sheep has to be done by the son. Moreover, because the
son refuses to kill the sheep, the eating of meat does not present itself
as a possibility, and no food test is in fact carried out. We are therefore
forced to consider a third test that might have been familiar to the receivers
of Barla¯m and Josaphat. In 1051 at Goslar, a town in what is today Germany, a group
accused of heresy was examined by ecclesiastical authorities. The heretics: were finally condemned when one of the bishops, more zealous
in his presentation of the case than mindful of the dignity of his rank, presented
them with a live chicken and ordered them to wring its neck. They refused
to kill the bird, and were deemed beyond hope of redemption. Ignoring the
arguments and threats of the assembly, they refused to recant and were hanged
upon a gibbet.54 The execution of these heretics, as near as can be
determined by modern scholars, was ordered because it was felt that "their
attitude implied a dualist-type belief in the transmigration of souls through
the animal kingdom"55 and suggested
that they were Manichaeans. The events at Goslar — and this group was not
alone among persecuted Christian groups in the eleventh century C.E. in its
refusal to kill animals56 — are often
treated by scholars as an important step toward the twelfth century full-blown
assault on heresy by the Church linked to the newly proclaimed death penalty
for heresy.57 Historically, the refusal to kill animals has certainly
been linked to the refusal to eat meat, but I believe we must distinguish
the two refusals. The abstention from meat found among Christian ascetics
typically had little to do with a refusal to kill animals.58 Buddhist refusal to kill animals was usually
not manifested in strict vegetarianism.59 In any case, the need for a separate killing test in Christendom
is clear. Food tests simply could not be relied upon to create an accurate
binary system. One could abstain from meat for orthodox and acceptable reasons
or for heterodox and unacceptable reasons. Only the killing test had the required
finesse. The parallels between the Goslar event and the episode
in the Ismaili Arabic text are obvious. In both cases, someone is subjected
to a religious test. In both cases, the tested person is required to kill
a nonhuman creature. However, what constitutes a pass for the implied
author of the Arabic text constitutes a fail for the Christians who
recorded the Goslar event. The Goslar group was pronounced heretical and executed
precisely for acting as Josaphat acts. Surely we have made some progress toward
the solution of our textual mystery? It was necessary to remove the test episode
from Barla¯m and Josaphat before allowing the story into Christendom
because the episode would have been considered heretical. But why would we think the omission of this episode had
anything to do with the events at Goslar? The removal of the episode from
the Barla¯m and Josaphat tradition must have preceded the Goslar incident
by at least a century. If the events at Goslar were unique, this question might
have considerable force, but there are other examples of the killing test
being used against alleged Manichaeans. In the Sasanian empire during the
reign of Shapur II (309-379 CE), for example, Zoroastrians used the test.
"The Manichaean satisfied the authorities that his
conversion was genuine by killing some ants, since it was understood by the
authorities that Manichaeans would not exterminate what they themselves called
the 'Living Spirit.'"60 Mas'udi, in his Meadows of Gold, draws a picture
of Manichaeans from Basra being put to the test by Muslims in the days of
the Caliph Al-Ma'mun (813-833 C.E.). The accused, who are in chains, say to
a man who has fallen in with them, As for us, we are Manichees who have been denounced to Al-Ma'mun
and are being brought before him, and he will ask us what attitude we take
and exhort us to discard our doctrine and invite us to abjure it and be converted
by putting all sorts of trials upon us. These include his showing us a picture
of Mani and commanding us to spit on it and renouncing him. And he will order
us to sacrifice a partridge. Whoever acquiesces, thereby saves his life; whoever
withholds, is killed.61 Lieu says such tests were common under the 'Abbasids.62 It is difficult to believe that there is no connection
between the tests that occurred in these three regions. We are surely justified
in positing a historical tradition of a killing test used to discover Manichaeans.
We cannot prove that those who removed the killing test from Barla¯m and
Josaphat were aware of this historical killing test, but it is plausible
to think that they were. Our investigation has a further step. We wish to ask more
precisely what the episode might have meant for the historical communities
likely to have transmitted and removed it. It will be helpful to distinguish
those subjected to the killing test from those who used it to test others.
The Tested
The association of the killing test with Manichaeism
leads us to wonder whether Manichaeans may have played a key role in the development
and transmission of Barla¯m and Josaphat. This would not be a novel
suggestion. The possibility of a Manichaean role in the story's development
has been an issue of scholarly debate for years.63
(As far as I am aware, the presence of the sheep episode has not previously
been used to support this position.64)
We certainly know that Manichaeans had, from an early period, a version of
Barla¯m and Josaphat.65 If the Arabic text's view of the kinship of
living beings is essentially Manichaean, we can speculate about the meaning
of the test episode and of the killing test more generally. The placement of the test in the Arabic text fits with
the Manichaean hypothesis. Its association with the seduction test would make
sense given the Manichaean attitude toward sexuality: procreation furthers
the entrapment of the dispersed particles of the Light in Matter.66 Its situation directly before Barla¯m's entrance
would make sense as well: Josaphat's passing of the killing test has demonstrated
his worthiness for instruction in the true faith, and he is now ready to receive
the teacher. Moreover, all the references in the text to the deaths of the
faithful take on a new immediacy if the text is Manichaean. The religion went
through periods of severe repression in the Middle East during the period
when Barla¯m and Josaphat was making its way through this region to
Europe. The harmless bird who has to hide its vegetarian diet becomes the
Manichaean, forced to look like others and to speak only indirectly about
the true faith. If the text is Manichaean, all three historical tests —
the sacrifice test, the food test, and the killing test — converge in the
passage dealing with the sacrifice of the sheep, although the killing test
occupies a position of privilege. One of the reasons Mani and his followers
denounced animal sacrifice was because they opposed idolatry.67 They also regarded the eating of meat as wrong.
While it was apparently sometimes tolerated in Hearers (roughly equivalent
to lay persons in Buddhism), it was absolutely forbidden in the Elect (roughly
equivalent to the monastic order in Buddhism).68 One of the "five commandments" in
Manichaeism was abstention from the eating of meat; and one aspect of the
"seal of the mouth" was the rejection of meat-eating.69 It was, of course, for this reason that food
tests could be used to discover Manichaeans. Above all, the killing of animals was forbidden in Manichaeism,
both to the Elect and to Hearers. One of the five commandments forbade killing,
as did the "seal of the hands."70 Indeed, Mani's opposition to hunting may have
been one of the causes of his execution.71
According to the Manichaean view, Light is dispersed throughout the Material
realm in the different sorts of living beings. Moreover, souls transmigrate
through various life forms.72 And this
position on the metaphysical commonality of souls was complemented with a
further affirmation: animals and plants — even the very earth and water —
are sentient and suffer when injured, and violence against them is for this
reason wrong.73 Augustine, in his efforts
to refute Manichaeism, took special delight in ridiculing the idea that plants
suffer, and he speaks with embarrassment of his own early days as a Manichaean
and of his "being insensibly and step by step drawn on to those follies,
as to believe that a fig-tree wept when it was plucked, and the tree, its
mother, shed milky tears."74 If the Ismaili Arabic Barla¯m and Josaphat was transmitted
by Manichaens, the sheep episode resonates with the suffering of the faithful.
The test reflected in this passage was actually used to discover adherents
and to force them to choose between identity change and death. It was part
of the machinery of their extermination. Of course, whether Barla¯m and Josaphat was constructed
by Manichaeans or by some other group, such as a deviant and persecuted Buddhist
sect in the Sasanian empire,75 or one of the other religious splinter groups
in the Middle East that forbad the slaughter of animals — "low church"
off-shoots of Zoroastrianism or heretical Muslims,76 for
example, or even dissident Christians,77 — we cannot be certain that the original inclusion
of the sheep episode in the Barla¯m and Josaphat tradition was based
on the historical practice of the killing test. It is possible that the scene
had a literary rather than a social origin, and I have tried to make this
plausible by referring to similar passages in Buddhist literature. Whatever
the reason for the episode's original inclusion, its meaning for its eventual
transmitters, and especially its meaning for those who removed it as it entered
Christendom, was likely determined by the historical practice of the killing
test. The Christians who removed the episode would not have been familiar
with Buddhist literary motifs, but they would have had ideas about what heresy
was and what tests had been used to discover it.
The Testers
I shall here leave aside Zoroastrians, Muslims, and
various other historical persecutors of Manichaeans in favor of Christians,
because it appears that Christians are the ones responsible for having removed
the sheep episode from our story as it was entering Europe. What the precise motives of those who removed the episode
were we do not know. Nor do we know in detail the reasoning of those who tested
the heretics at Goslar. Both preceded Aquinas, for example, so we cannot look
for his influence. The writings of Saint Augustine were uniquely influential
in the medieval period among Christians trying to work out a position on the
"Manichees" they encountered: his nine years as a Manichaean during
his youth gave him considerable knowledge of this religion, and his subsequent
critique of it helped create a model for the Christian rejection of Manichaeism
and of wrong views on the relationship between human and nonhuman beings.
That Augustine's writings influenced clerics at Goslar and elsewhere in the
eleventh century C.E. is likely;78
that his writings were crucial in the campaign against the Cathars that began
in the twelfth century is certain.79
A summary of his position relative to the five aspects of the concept of the
kinship of living beings found in Indian Buddhism may give us some insight
into the meaning of the test episode for the Christians who removed it.80 Augustine's metaphysics do not deny all commonality between
animals, plants, and human beings. Animals and plants, like us, are creatures;
and having been created by God they, like us, are good. Their goodness, like
our own, is derivative and dependent because God is the source of all goodness
and the only one who is fully good. Augustine held to a clear hierarchy of
existence, according to which some beings are closer to God, and therefore
more good, than others. Human beings, who have been created in the image of
God — meaning, for Augustine, that they have been given a rational soul —
are closer to God than animals and plants. Augustine's writings therefore
speak of animals and plants as in a different "class" than humans
and as not sharing a "common nature" or "common rights"
with us.81 In accepting a hierarchy of being and a hierarchy of value,
Augustine does not put himself immediately at odds with the Indian Buddhist
view. However, the differences between the levels in his hierarchy are stronger
than those in Indian Buddhism, and his commonality between humans and nonhumans
is weaker. In Indian Buddhism, humans are regarded as more rational than those
beings considered lower in the cosmic order, but there is no question of humans
possessing a different sort of soul from other beings, and multi-level transmigration
powerfully affirms the common nature of living beings. Augustine did not deny that animals feel pain — though
he ridiculed the Manichaean idea that plants suffer — but he denied that human
beings should be greatly disturbed by this pain. He said to his Manichaean
opponent, "I find no fault with your senses, that is, your bodily senses,
here, inasmuch as we can perceive by their cries that animals die in pain,
although we make little of this since the beast, lacking a rational soul,
is not related to us by a common nature."82 Augustine did not recognize increased sensitivity to nonhuman
suffering as a sign of increased knowledge or enlightenment. He characterized
this sensitivity as "follies" and "superstition."83
The contrast with the Buddhist position is sharp here. The sensitivity toward
the suffering of the nonhuman seen in the Buddhalegend as the product of many
lifetimes of training and sacrifice is seen by Augustine as delusion. I leave
to one side the debate over the possible suffering of plants, on which there
is more than one position in Buddhist texts. Augustine did not believe the killing of nonhumans by humans
was wrong. "Christ Himself shows that to refrain from the killing of
animals and the destroying of plants is the height of superstition, for, judging
that there are no common rights between us and the beasts and trees. . . ."
84
Against the Manichaeans, Augustine defended animal sacrifice as advocated
in the Hebrew Bible. He believed the practice was no longer necessary because
its role was merely to prefigure the true sacrifice in Christ, but he denied
that there was anything immoral about the killing of animals per se.85
Once more, the contrast between his position and the Indian Buddhist position
is sharp Finally, it is clear that for Augustine there is no salvation
for the animal soul, nor is the salvation of humans impeded by the killing
of animals. Augustine, then, was moved to take a position on the kinship
of living beings quite different in almost every respect from the position
affirmed in the Buddhalegend. It is not difficult to see how his writings
could have been interpreted as supporting the removal of the sheep episode
from our text and could have been used to legitimize the historical use of
the killing test. What shall we conclude about the meaning of the sheep episode
for Christians in the medieval period, who were utilizing an Augustinian model
of heresy? The episode would have dramatically represented a wrong view, a
proscribed heretical view, about the relationship of the human to the nonhuman.
It would have been seen as giving to nonhumans a greater dignity than they
deserved. Indirectly, the episode would have been seen as representing thought
systems and social groups — especially the Manichaean heresy — that insulted
God and led human beings to perdition.
Final Words
Buddhism, as an institutionalized
religion, was little known and had little direct influence on Europe in medieval
times.86 What influence it had was
mediated through its stories, numbers of which worked their way from India
to Europe over long periods of time and were subject to religious, cultural,
and ideological filters,87 and through
other religious systems, which borrowed from Buddhism and spread Buddhist
ideas in mediated, filtered, and transmuted ways throughout Europe. Foremost
among such stories was the Buddhalegend, and foremost among such religious
systems was Manichaeism. The relation of human to nonhuman life is one of the areas
of thought where Buddhism is most likely to have exerted a crucial influence
on the founder of Manichaeism during his residence in the Northwest of the
Indian subcontinent.88 Although the
Manichaean and Buddhist positions on the kinship of living beings are far
from identical, there are important commonalities. In fact, it can be argued
that all five key elements of the Buddhist model of kinship can be found in
Manichaeism. This being the case, we may say that the historical killing test
was not merely a conscious means of detecting and eliminating Manichaean ideas
and values (as well as actual Manichaeans and their institutions), but an
unconscious means of eliminating Buddhist ideas and values. Buddhist views
of the kinship of living beings were prevented, through such means, from being
transmitted to the West in the medieval period. As the socio-political filters did their work, parallel
textual filters eliminated dangerous Buddhist ideas and values from written
sources. The Buddhalegend was in this way kept from speaking its word about
the kinship of living beings until its second wave of westward transmission,
during the advent of the Romantic period.
Endnotes
(1) P. Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics:
Foundations, Values and Issues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000), pp. 150 ff. See also two works by L. Schmithausen: "Buddhism and
Nature," in Buddhism and Nature: Proceedings of an International Symposium
on the Occasion of EXPO 1990 (Tokyo: The International Institute for Buddhist
Studies, 1991), pp. 22-35, and The Problem of the Sentience of Plants in
Earliest Buddhism (Tokyo: The International Institute for Buddhist Studies,
1991). Cf. A. Henrichs, "Thou shalt not kill a tree. Greek, Manichaean
and Indian Tales," Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists
vol. 16 (1979), pp. 85-108. Return to text.(2) P. Harvey, op cit., pp. 156-157. Return to text.(3) E.g., E. H. Johnston, ed. and trans., The Buddhacarita
or Acts of the Buddha (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, "New Enlarged Edition"
containing parts I, II and III, 1984), canto xiv, verses 7 ff, pp. 204 ff.
(Sanskrit text pp. 158 ff.). See also the treatment in the Fo Pen Hsing
Chi Ching. S. Beal, The Romantic Legend of Sâkya Buddha: from the Chinese-Sanscrit,
London: Trübner & Co., 1875, p. 224 and J. Takakusu, K. Watanabe, eds.,
Taisho Shinshu Daizokyo (The Tripitaka in Chinese), (Tokyo: Taisho
Shinshu Daizokyo Kanko Kai, 1924), vol. 3, no. 190, p. 805. Return to text.(4) For examples in the Fo Pen Hsing Chi Ching
see Beal, op cit., pp. 72-73, 73-74, 91-92. Return to text.(5) E. H. Johnston, op cit., canto v, verses 4 ff.,
pp. 62-63 (Sanskrit text, pp. 45-46). Return to text.(6) Beal, op cit., p. 73. Taisho Shinshu Daizokyo,
vol. 3, no. 190, p. 706. Return to text.(7) I have discussed the double noesis of the
Buddhalegend, and its transformation in Barla¯m and Josaphat, in "Rejecting
Enlightenment? The Medieval Christian Transformation of the Buddhalegend in
Jacobus de Voragine's Barla¯m and Josaphat," Studies in Religion,
vol. 30, no. 2 (2001), pp. 151-165. Return to text.(8) See R. Thapar, Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), pp. 250-266. Return to text.(9) See C. Tawney's translation of Somadeva's work.
N. Penzer, ed., The Ocean of Story (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, second
and enlarged edition, 1968), vol. 2, pp. 139 ff.; vol. 3, pp. 3 ff.; vol.
5, p. 158. Return to text.(10) E. H. Johnston, op cit., canto xi, verses 64, 65,
p. 162 (Sanskrit text 125-126). Return to text.(11) Taisho Shinshu Daizokyo, vol. 3, no. 190,
p. 703. Cf. Beal, op cit., pp. 72-73, but Beal misunderstands the passage. (12) Taisho Shinshu Daizokyo, vol. 3, no. 190,
p. 747. My translation. Cf. Beal, op cit., pp. 158-159. Return to text.(13) See Taisho Shinshu Daizokyo, vols. 3 and
4, nos. 184 ff. The number of versions is approximate because the above texts
do not all represent genuinely distinct versions of the tale, and because
many fragments of the legend are scattered widely throughout the Chinese Tripitaka. Return to text.(14) E. Arnold, The Light of Asia: Being the Life
and Teaching of Gotama, Prince of India and Founder of Buddhism (Chicago:
Rand, McNally, 1890; originally published 1879). Return to text.(15) E. Arnold, op cit., pp. 152, 192, 207. Return to text.(16) For a general account of Barla¯m and Josaphat
see P. Almond, "The Buddha of Christendom: A review of The Legend
of Barla¯m and Josaphat." Religious Studies, vol. 23 (1987),
pp. 391-406. For an excellent bibliography see T. Bräm,"Le roman de Barla¯m
et Josaphat," Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques, II (Paris:
CNRS Éditions, 1994), pp. 63-83. Return to text.(17) See MacQueen, "Rejecting Enlightenment?" Return to text.(18) D. Gimaret, trans., Le Livre de Bilawhar et
Bûdâsf selon la version arabe ismaélienne. Geneva and Paris: Librairie
Droz, 1971, pp. 55 ff. Return to text.(19) Ibid., p. 61. Return to text.(20) D. Lang, trans., The Balavariani (Barla¯m and
Josaphat): A Tale from the Christian East translated from the Old Georgian. Return to text.
Berkeley: Univ. Of California Press, 1966. Return to text.(21) Gimaret, op cit., p. 53. Return to text.(22) Bräm, op cit., p. 70. Return to text.(23) Bräm, op cit., p. 64. Return to text.(24) Bräm, op cit., p. 76. Return to text.(25) Bräm, op cit., pp. 76 ff.; J. Hirsh, ed., Barla¯m
and Josaphat: A Middle English Life of Buddha. (London: Oxford Univ. Press,
1986), p. xix; J. Sonet, Le roman de Barla¯m et Josaphat: recherches sur
la tradition manuscrite Latine et Française (Louvain: Bibliothèque de
L'Université, 1949), pp. 73 ff. Return to text.(26) Other changes and omissions are discussed in Almond,
op cit., Hirsh, op cit. and M. Pitts, "Barla¯m and Josaphat: A Legend
for All Seasons," Journal of South Asian Literature 16 (1981),
pp. 1-16. See also G. MacQueen, "Rejecting Enlightenment?" and "Changing
master narratives in midstream: Barla¯m and Josaphat and the growth
of religious intolerance in the Buddhalegend's westward journey," Journal
of Buddhist Ethics 5 (1998), pp. 144-166. Return to text.(27) In unpublished research, I have identified approximately
seventy such distinct narrative elements in the Ismaili text. Return to text.(28) E.g., Gimaret, op cit., pp. 93-94, 131, 133, 153-155,
158, 164-165, 192-193, 212. Return to text.(29) Ibid., pp. 66, 81 ff., 196. Return to text.(30) Ibid., pp. 96, 153-155, 180-181, 192-193, 204 ff.
See also the treatment of Josaphat's horse, Ibid., p. 209. Return to text.(31) E.g., ibid., 81 ff., 93-94, 180. Undoubtedly, the
attitude towards animals in this text is mixed. The tendency to put important
truths in the mouths of animals is balanced by a conviction that animals are
beneath humans and that human beings must work to distinguish themselves from
animals. See, e.g., the parable of the princes and the monkeys, 180-181. Return to text.(32) Ibid., 81 ff. Return to text.(33) E. H. Johnston, op cit., Part II, p. 57. Return to text.(34) See the ja¯takas numbered 18, 19, 50, 314, 542,
543 in E. B. Cowell, ed., The Ja¯taka, London: Luzac & Co., 1969.Return to text.(35) Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 306-309, ja¯taka no. 433. Return to text.(36) Ibid., vol. 3, p. 309. The Pali can be found in
V. Fausboll, ed., The Ja¯taka together with its Commentary ( London:
Luzac & Co., 1963), vol. 3, p. 518. Concepts of sin are, of course, far
from identical in the two contexts, but in both cases what are at issue are
deeds that pollute and that impede the achievement of salvation or liberation. Return to text.(37) Gimaret, op cit., pp. 93-94. Return to text.(38) C. Rhys Davids and F. Woodward, trans., The
Book of the Kindred Sayings (Samyutta-nikaya), (London, Luzac &
Co., 1952), Part II, pp. 67-69. Return to text.(39) Gimaret, op cit., pp. 192-193. Return to text.(40) MacQueen, "Rejecting Enlightenment?"
and "Changing master narratives in midstream." Return to text.(41) MacQueen, "Rejecting Enlightenment?" Return to text.(42) D. Lang, op cit., p. 113. Return to text.(43) W. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early
Church: A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus (New York:
New York Univ. Press, 1967), pp. 6, 32-33, 102-103, 163-164, 302 ff., 365
ff. See also H. Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1972) pp. 23, 29, 31, 35, 53, 55, 59. Return to text.(44) Frend, op cit., throughout. (45) E.g., Gimaret, op cit., pp. 66, 101, 110, 118. Return to text.(46) Ibid., pp. 140 ff. Return to text.(47) E.g., Musurillo, op cit., pp. 137 ff., 289. Return to text.(48) See J. Binns, Ascetics and Ambassadors of Christ:
the Monasteries of Palestine 314-631 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994),
p. 108; and A. Voobus, History of Asceticism in the Syrian Orient: A Contribution
to the History of Culture in the Near East, II, Early Monasticism in Mesopotamia
and Syria (Louvain, Secretariat du Corpus, 1960), pp. 262-263. Return to text.(49) See, e.g., Augustine's remarks on the subject in
D. Gallagher and I. Gallagher, trans., Saint Augustine: The Catholic and
Manichaean Ways of Life (De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae et de Moribus
Manchaeorum) (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1966),
pp. 52 ff. and 84 ff. Return to text.(50) The Manichaean position is discussed later in this
paper. For the Marcionites, see Adolf von Harnack, Marcion: The Gospel
of the Alien God (trans. J. Steely and L. Bierma, Durham, North Carolina:
Labyrinth Press, 1990), pp. 96-97. Return to text.(51) S. Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire
and Medieval China (second edition, Tübigen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1992), pp.
183-184. See also S. Lieu, Manichaeism in Mesopotamia and the Roman East
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), p. 98. Return to text.(52) J. Russell, Dissent and Reform in the Early
Middle Ages (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1965), pp. 32-42, 208.
R. Moore, The Birth of Popular Heresy (London: Edward Arnold, 1975),
pp. 9-22. M. Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian
Reform to the Reformation (second ed., Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 16
ff. Return to text.(53) Russell, op cit., p. 204. Lambert, op cit., pp.
55, 107-108, 122-124, 141. See also M. Lambert, The Cathars (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1998), p. 164. Return to text.(54) Russell, op cit., p. 42. Return to text.(55) Lambert, Medieval Heresy, p. 27. Return to text.(56) Russell, op cit., p. 39. Moore, op cit., p. 22. Return to text.(57) See the treatment of the episode and the related
eleventh century heresies in Russell, op cit., Moore, op cit. and Lambert,
Medieval Heresy. Return to text.(58) See Augustine's discussion in Saint Augustine:
The Catholic and Manichaean Ways of Life, pp. 86 ff. Return to text.(59) See Peter Harvey's discussion in An Introduction
to Buddhist Ethics, pp. 157 ff. Return to text.(60) Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire
and Medieval China, pp. 111-112. Return to text.(61) G. Widengren, Mani and Manichaeism. (revised
ed., trans. C. Kessler, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965), p. 131. Cf.
Mas'udi, The Meadows of Gold: The Abbasids. (P. Lunde and C. Stone,
trans. and ed., London: Kegan Paul International, 1989), pp. 178-179. Return to text.(62) Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire
and Medieval China, p. 113. Return to text.(63) See, e.g., J. Hirsh, ed., Barla¯m and Josaphat:
A Middle English Life of Buddha. (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1986), pp.
xxiii ff. Return to text.(64) David Lang, in discussing the similarities of Barla¯m
to the Manichaean Elect, has remarked on the vegetarianism of the Elect and
their "obligation not to produce fresh life or to take it." The
Wisdom of Balahvar: A Christian Legend of the Buddha (London: George Allen
and Unwin, 1957), p. 26. Return to text.(65) Hirsh, op cit., p. xvii. Bram, Return to text.(66) Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire
and Medieval China, pp. 26 ff. Return to text.(67) Ibid., pp. 24, 177. Return to text.(68) Regarding the Hearers, see ibid., pp. 181-182.
Augustine is not consistent on this matter, but see Saint Augustine: The
Catholic and Manichaean Ways of Life, pp. 100, 102, where he stresses
the difference in the strictness with which dietary rules are observed by
Manichaean Elect and Hearers. Return to text.(69) Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire
and Medieval China, pp. 26-27. Return to text.(70) Ibid., pp. 26-27. Return to text.(71) Ibid., pp. 108-109. Cf. R. Emmerick, "Buddhism
among Iranian Peoples" (in E. Yarshater, ed., The Cambridge History
of Iran, vol. 3 (2): The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods, Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1983), p. 971. Return to text.(72) Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire
and Medieval China, pp. 26-29; A. V. Jackson, "The Doctrine of Metempsychosis
in Manichaeism," Journal of the American Oriental Society 45 (1925),
pp. 246-268; G. Casadio, "The Manichaean Metempsychosis: Typology and
Historical Roots," in Wiessner and Klimkeit, eds., Studia Manichaica
(Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1992), pp. 105-130. Return to text.(73) For the position on plants, earth, and water, see
ibid., pp. 45-46, 49; Lieu, Manichaeism in Mesopotamia and the Roman East,
p. 82. See also Henrichs, op cit. as well as Jackson and Casadio, op cit.
The ability of animals to suffer was one of the reasons Manichaeans were forbidden
to kill them. See Saint Augustine: The Catholic and Manichaean Ways of
Life, p. 105. Return to text.(74) E. B. Pusey, trans., The Confessions of Saint
Augustine (New York: Modern Library, 1999), p. 49. Return to text.(75) Buddhists were persecuted alongside Manichaeans
and others under the Sasanians. J. Wiesehofer, Ancient Persia: From 550
BC to 650 AD. (trans. Azizeh Azodi, London: I. B. Tauris, 1996), p. 199. Return to text.(76) W. Madelung, Religious Trends in Early Islamic
Iran (U.S.A.: Persian Heritage Foundation, 1988), pp. 4-10. Return to text.(77) Wiesehofer, op cit., p. 156. Return to text.(78) Russell, op cit., p. 39. It is not difficult to
imagine a cleric constructing the Goslar test on the basis of Augustine's
writings. Augustine did not hesitate to give advice on the detection of Manichaeans
during his own lifetime (Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire and
Medieval China, pp. 202-203), and he was adamant that the refusal to kill
animals was un-Christian (Saint Augustine: The Catholic and Manichaean
Ways of Life, p. 102). Return to text.(79) Moore, op cit., p. 2. Return to text.(80) This summary is based largely on Saint Augustine:
The Catholic and Manichaean Ways of Life and Confession. For general
accounts of Augustine's philosophical position, see E. Portalie, A Guide
to the Thought of Saint Augustine (trans. R. Bastian, Chicago: Henry Regnery,
1960); E. Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine (trans.
L. Lynch, New York: Random House, 1960); P. Brown, Augustine of Hippo:
a Biography (Berkeley: Univ. of California, 1967). Return to text.(81) Saint Augustine: The Catholic and Manichaean Ways
of Life, pp. 102, 105. Return to text.(82) Ibid., p. 105. Return to text.(83) Pusey, op cit., p. 49; Saint Augustine: The
Catholic and Manichaean Ways of Life, p. 102. Return to text.(84) Saint Augustine: The Catholic and Manichaean
Ways of Life, p. 102. Return to text.(85) Ibid., p. 102; The Works of Aurelius Augustine,
Bishop of Hippo, vol. V, "Writings in Connection with the Manichaean
Heresy," p. 174. Return to text.(86) D. Scott, "Medieval Christian Responses to
Buddhism," Journal of Religious History, 1988. Return to text.(87) J. Hirsh, The Boundaries of Faith: The Development
and Transmission of Medieval Spirituality (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996),
chapter 2. Return to text.(88) The degree of influence of Buddhism on Manichaeism
is controversial. In the present connection, see Lieu, Manichaeism in the
Later Roman Empire and Medieval China, pp. 71 ff.; Widengren, Mani
and Manichaeism, pp. 23 ff., 66-67; Henrichs, op cit.; Jackson, op cit.;
Casadio, op cit. Return to text.
