Islamobuddhica: What If Buddhism Is a Scriptural Religion? “The Scriptures of Shakyamuni” in the Arabic Compendium of Chronicles of Rashid al-Din

Abstract

In the “History of India” of Rashid al-Dm (1249/50-1318), which is a part of his “Compendium of Chronicles”, the author mentions ‘The Scriptures of Shakyamuni”. Rashid al-Dln’s informant was the Buddhist monk Kamdlashri from Kashmir. These references are found in several passages of the “History of India”: at the beginning and the end of this book as well as at the beginning of the section about Buddhism. The Buddha is presented in that part as the latest “Prophet” in a series of other “Prophets” (past Buddhas of earlier ages) who established the “Suma” for his followers, and his words constituted the “Scriptures”- the Abhidharma. Karl Jahn and Johan Elverskog interpreted this as Islamization of the discourse, and Johan Elverskog explicitly denied that the Abhidharma could be called the “Scriptures of the Buddha” or his “revelation”. The present article shows this to be wrong. It is well known that Buddhist sources claim that the Fourth Buddhist Council was held in Kashmir in the reign of King Kanishka, and the Sarvdstivddius declared the Abhidharma-pitaka as “the words of the Buddha” (buddha-vacana) in polemics with the SUtravddms (Sautrdntika). A similar veneration of the third part of the Buddhist Canon (Abhidhamma) is also witnessed to in Pali sources.