خالد منصور هډه وال

1

Abstract

The earliest more protracted contact between Buddhist and Muslim scholars began in the mid-eighth century CE during the early ‘Abbasid Caliphate. Its second caliph, al-Mansur (ruled 754 – 775 CE), employed Indian architects to construct a new capital for his empire. He named it “Baghdad,” a Sanskrit name meaning “Gift from God.” As part of the city plan, the Caliph had a House of Knowledge (Ar. Bayt al-Hikmat) built for the study and translation of literature from the Greek and Indian cultural worlds, particularly concerning scientific topics. The next ‘Abbasid ruler, Caliph al- Mahdi (r. 775 – 785 CE), invited many Buddhist monk scholars from the monasteries on the Indian subcontinent and Afghanistan to work at this House of Knowledge. He commissioned them to help translate primarily medical and astronomical texts from Sanskrit into Arabic.

The chief minister of the fifth ’Abbasid caliph, Harun al-Rashid (r. 786-809 CE), was Yahya ibn Barmak, a Muslim grandson of one of the Buddhist administrative heads of Nava Vihara Monastery in Balkh. Although, Buddhist scholars were already present at the House of Knowledge in Baghdad at that time, Yahya invited yet more Buddhist scholars, especially from Kashmir. The focus was on translating, from Sanskrit into Arabic, Buddhist medical texts, specifically Ravigupta’s Ocean of Attainments (Skt. Siddhasara).

It does seem, however, that discussions of religious beliefs did occur at that time between the Buddhist and Islamic scholars. Evidence for this comes from The Book of Religions and Creeds (Ar. Kitab al-Milal wa al-Nihal), a treatise on Islamic heresies, in which the twelfth-century CE Isma’ili theologian, al-Shahrastani, gives a brief account of the image the Islamic scholars had of Buddhism during Caliph Harun al-Rashid’s time. As the main interest at the House of Knowledge lay in Greek thought, however, their study of Buddhism was not in depth. Nevertheless, Ibn al-Nadim’s late tenth-century CE Book of Catalogues (Ar. Kitab al-Fihrist), listed several Buddhist works that were rendered into Arabic at that time, such as an account of Buddha’s previous lives, The Book of the Buddha (Ar. Kitab al-Budd ). The text was based on two Sanskrit works: A Rosary of Previous Life Accounts (Skt. Jatakamala) and Ashvaghosha’s Deeds of the Buddha (Skt. Buddhacarita).

خالد منصور هډه وال