SHORT REVIEWS AND BOOK NOTES

STERN, S. M. and WALZER, SOFIE, Three Unknown Buddhist Stories in an Arabic Version, Introduction, Text and Translation. Oxford, Cassirer, ‘971, 38 pp. E2.00.

The three ‘unknown’ stories offered in this book are not found in the basic Arabic version of the Buddha-legend or in the Georgian and Greek versions dependent on it. They are drawn from the abbreviated selection found in one of the writings of Ibn Babiiya, a tenth century Muslim theologian who used a different form of the Arabic version.

The first story entitled ‘The story of the king’s grey hair’, a symbol of death and transiency, is shown to have parallels in Pali Jataka stories; though oddly enough the translators’ introductory remarks seem to overlook that the story which they themselves translated refers to a white hair (p. 18). The second story is about a skull, which, since it could equally well be that of a king or a pauper recalls a wayward king to the fear of ‘God Almighty’. The most one could say about the Buddhist character of this story is that it is consistent with the teaching of imper- manence. There does not even seem to be any proof that the story is Indian in origin rather than, say, Persian. The third story is another version of the ‘great renunciation’ modelled fairly closely on older forms of the Buddha-legend, and including encounters with a corpse, an old man and a sick man, in that order; in their summary of the contents the trans- lators reverse the order to the normal one, but without comment (p. IO).

The second part of the third story contains four parables, in two of which ‘men have horrifying experiences with women’ (not in all four, as the translators unaccountably state on page IO). The moral of the other two is however the same, namely that the prince is wise in not wishing to return to the attachments of the senses by marrying a beautiful princess. Buddhist parallels are pointed out for one of these four parables and a possible Central Asian origin for another. There remain two for which no Indian model is known.

One of these is about thieves who stole a chest thought to contain treas- ure but which on being opened contained snakes. (Why do the translators describe this story as inept?) The same simile, used to make a slightly different but nevertheless consistent point, is found in the very first anecdote in Dogen’s Sh6bcgenzc Zuimonki (I 3th century Japan) which in turn goes back to Tao-hsuan’s seventh century Hsii kao-seng chuan (cf. R. Masunaga, A Primer of Soto Zen 5). Here it is not thieves but a monk who carried about a box containing a golden Buddha image and other relics which he treasured highly. When the zen master told him that the prac- tice was worthless, the monk was indignant, but on being told by the master to open the box he found a poisonous snake coiled up inside. Thus in both cases the simile is used to show the folly of being attached to obstacles in the way of enlightenment. Would it be too fanciful to suspect a common origin for this simile of the box with highly valued contents which turn out to be snakes, which gradually was elaborated in different ways to suit different needs ?

86 SHORT REVIEWS AND BOOK NOTES

The other parable for which no Indian origin is known is about a prince who in his drunkenness mistook a corpse for his wife. For this compare a verse in a treatise on meditation translated by Lu K’uan Yii in The Secrets of Chinese Meditation (1g64), p. 120:

Embrace not a stinking corpse in sleep for it contains impurities and is miscalled a human being.

This is not a story, but again the basic simile and its reference are the same. Unfortunately the passage is inadequately identified as being part of Chih-I’s ‘ T’ung Meng Chih I&an’, a work which appears neither in Leon Hurvitz’s list of the 36 extant works ascribed to Chih-I (Chih-I, 1962, pp. 332-3), nor in his list of the 21 lost works ascribed to him. Nor can the title be found in the Hcbcgirin catalogue of the Chinese Tripitaka. But if the provenance of Lu K’uan Yii’s secrets is obscure, the parallel is marked enough to suggest a widespread currency.

M.P.

BROWN, PETER, Religion and Society in the Age of Saint Augustine, Faber and Faber, 1972, pp. 352. E3.25; MACINTYRE, ALASDAIR, Against the Self-Images of the Age, Duckworth, 1871, pp. vi-284. E3.45; WINCH, PETER, Ethics and Action, Routledge and Kegan Paul, ‘972, pp. 23 I. A2.75.

Most of the essays in these collections have been published before, but the majority are of sufficient interest and importance to justify their reproduction. Peter Brown follows up his universally acclaimed biography of Saint Augustine of Hippo with a volume which illuminates many aspects of the religious situation in the later Roman Empire. The author’s dazzling gifts of imagination, intelligence and industry are fully deployed in his treatment of such topics as the interpretation of the religious crisis of the third century, the Christianization of the Roman aristocracy, Christianity and local culture in late Roman Africa, and the relationship between sorcery, demons and the rise of Christianity.

Alasdair MacIntyre and Peter Winch have long been at loggerheads, and the whiff of grapeshot is detectable in both volumes. Though pri- marily of interest to philosophers, the student of religion cannot fail to be stimulated by Winch’s essays on ‘Understanding a Primitive Society’ and ‘Human Nature’, while MacIntyre writes provocatively about many topics including ‘God and the theologians’ and Goldmann’s Hidden God.

S.P.M.