Today I am sharing with you another thrift shop find circa 1986. This was a book I definitely needed to snap up given its unusual content. The tale of Barlam and Josaphat, also known as Bilawhar and Budhasaf, are Christian Saints whose legend was born from the story of Gautama Buddha and his mentor Alara Kalama. This sounds far-fetched, yet this really did happen…But how did Buddha end up as a Christian saint? Well, it all starts with the Parthian Empire, which was a political and cultural power in ancient Iran from 247 BC to 224 AD.
The Parthians were known to be culturally heterogeneous, meaning that although members of the empire came from different ethnic groups and religions, they adopted the art, architecture, and customs from the places they had conquered/assimilated. Which made sense given that this empire spawned from a synthesis of Greek/Hellenistic and Achaemenian culture. At its peak, the Parthian Empire was said to have stretched from the northern reaches of the Euphrates, which is now central/eastern Turkiye, to present-day Afghanistan, Baghdad, and western Pakistan.
The Empire was also located on the Silk Road, which was a trade route between the Roman Empire in the Mediterranean Basin, and the Han dynasty of China. Meaning that it became a significant centre of commerce. Along that route it is believed that a Buddhist text was picked up and translated into Arabic as the "Kitab Bilawhar wa-Budasaf" (Book of Bilawhar and Budhasa) in the eighth century, where it then became popularised in Middle Eastern/ Christian circles before appearing in Europe.
Many of the versions originally found were Manichean and given out in hope of sharing/converting others to the faith. That faith being Manicheanism, which was a former major world religion founded in the third century AD by the heterodox, Parthian prophet Mani.
In a nutshell Manichaeism teaches of an elaborate dualistic cosmology describing the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness, and the hope of Mani was to combine the religions of that time such as Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism with the purpose of surpassing them as the one true faith. This was before Islam came to be and subsequently replaced Manichaeism as a major religion in that region (Parthia). (You can see some practices in Manichaeism that are similar in Islam such as praying during certain times of the day and ablution before prayer).
Getting back on point, the first Christianized adaptation was the Georgian epic "The Balavariani" dating back to the tenth century. A Georgian monk, Euthymius of Athos, translated the story into Greek, where it ended up in Constantinople. There the Greek adaptation was then translated into Latin in 1048 and soon became well known in Western Europe as Saint Barlam and Josaphat, where the story became about an Indian king who persecuted the now Christian Church in his realm. After astrologers predicted that his own son would someday become a follower of this faith (Christianity), the King isolated the young Prince Josaphat from any outside influences (his home became a prison); Nevertheless, the prince could not escape his fate, and by chance met the hermit Saint Barlam and converted to Christianity. After much tribulation, the young Prince's father also decided to convert to the Christian faith and turned over his throne to Josaphat. The King then retired to the desert to also become a hermit, and Josaphat himself later abdicated in order to go into seclusion with his old teacher Barlam.
This story became so revered that over time despite the two characters never truly being canonised, many churches popped up honouring the legend including one that still stands in Greece today. They both also have official feast days on the (30th May and 26th August) in the Eastern Orthodox church.
Although Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism are still major players today regarding world religion (along with Islam), I would also like to add that Manichaeism did not die out completely and can still be found in small pockets (like Zoroastrianism) along what was once the Silk Road. In modern China, Manichaean groups are still known to be active in the southern provinces, especially in Quanzhou and the rest of Fujian, where there is a Manichaean place of worship that is still used today known as the Cao'an Temple.
I also love when old books I find have their own history, a library marking or check out card, some annotations...even an Ex Libris-stamp, which I was quite surprised to find in this book as it belonged to two actually well-known authors (Tom Shippey and Walter. J Ong), RIP to the later.
Below you can find more information about them (the book owners), and also Mani as well as his religion, Manichaeism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Shippey
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_J._Ong
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mani_(prophet)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism