Devatasutra in the Arabic Compendium of Chronicles of Rashid al-Din

Abstract

In the Compendium of Chronicles (Jami‘ al-tawarikh) of a famous medieval scholar, physician, and influential vizier at the Ilkhanid court Rashid al-Din Hamadhani (1249/50-1318) that was compiled on the basis of the works of the court historian Abu-l-Qasim Qashani (died after 1323/4), one finds a History of India (Tarikh al-Hind wa’l-Sind), which contains a lengthy section about the Buddha and Buddhism. Among the Arabic sources on Buddhism, this work is considered to be the most important. One of the chapters in this section is a version of the famous Buddhist sutra adapted for the Muslim reader, in which the Buddhist teachings and ethical principles are presented in the form of questions-riddles addressed by a heavenly being to the Buddha as well as his answers. The article provides a survey of various versions of this work that were in use in Buddhist cultures in the Middle Ages, as well as a comparison of the Muslim and Buddhist interpretations of this sutra presented in the Arabic version of the Compendium of Chronicles. The article is followed by a publication of the Arabic text of the sutra based on the only preserved manuscript from the London collection Khalili MSS 727, and its Russian translation.