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Western Christian Contacts with Buddhism, c.1050–1350
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
The existence of Buddhism was known to some people in the Graeco-Roman world. Writing about two centuries after the birth of Christ, Clement of Alexandria recorded: ‘Some of the Indians obey the precepts of Buddha, whom, on account of his extraordinary sanctity, they have raised to divine honours.’ No Latin translation was made of this part of Clement’s work, and nothing was known of Buddhism in Western Europe in the early Middle Ages. In 1048 an anonymous Western scholar living in Constantinople made a Latin translation from the Greek of a story called Barlaam and Ioasaph, which was wrongly attributed to John of Damascus (d. c.75o).This appeared to be a saint’s life: it told how the Indian prince Ioasaph had renounced the world and embraced an austere ascetic life under the direction of the hermit Barlaam. In fact, this was a life of Prince Gautama, the Buddha. This version had originated in the kingdom of Bactria and had been translated into Arabic and later into Georgian, from which the Greek version was made in the early eleventh century. In the process of transmission the text had been Christianized. Prince Ioasaph, who renounced earthly glory to lead the contemplative life, fitted easily into the pattern of Christian hagiography, and his life proved popular because of its exotic setting in the Indies. During the Middle Ages the Latin version was translated into most Western languages, but Western people remained ignorant of Buddhism until the rise of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century made it possible for them to travel to central and eastern Asia.
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References
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