Barlaam and Josaphat: A Christian Tale of the Buddha Read Online Free

have been read aloud to an audience, but it is most certainly a translation from a written source, as the narrator claims, and not transcribed from an oral performance. However, it does, as mentioned, preserve many interventions from the narrator that directly address an audience. I have placed the narrator’s shorter interruptions in parentheses. Longer interventions, sometimes in the third person, are signaled in the notes. Unless specifically addressing women (usually to chastise them), the text uses masculine pronouns to describe Christian subjects, and I have preserved the use of masculine pronouns instead of gender-neutral identifications, to reflect both the Old French usage and the text’s perspective. Apart from a few mentions of women devoted to God in the parables Barlaam recounts, women in
Barlaam and Josaphat
represent seductions of the world that lead to the loss of the soul, and the lessons of the story are explicitly addressed to men.
    The translation follows Carl Appel’s 1907 edition based on two manuscripts. 7 Appel identifies some short lacunae in his edition, but I have not marked these in the translation; I have filled in the lines where the meaning seemed obvious, and I have simply skipped over several missing lines and inserted a transition. I have also added chapter divisions to the Old French text. Gui’s
Barlaam and Josaphat
, like the Greek and all subsequent versions, is full of Biblical allusions, citations, and paraphrases, which I have not attempted to document.
    PEGGY MCCRACKEN

Acknowledgments
    Matthias Meyer and Constanza Cordoni first drew my attention to
Barlaam and Josaphat.
Inspired by an international conference they organized, my colleague Donald Lopez and I cowrote a book,
In Search of the Christian Buddha
, while I was translating Gui’s narrative. That collaboration made the translation all the more interesting and rewarding, and I am very grateful for our many conversations about the text and for Don’s encouragement to take on the translation in the first place. Doug Anderson now knows more about
Barlaam
than he ever imagined he could bear, I am sure, and I could never have completed this project without his good humor, unfailing support, and willingness to help me translate chess metaphors.

King Avenir and his kingdom
    In early times, the holy church taught about God, and as the pagans learned more about him, they understood that they were lost. They saw that living without belief would destroy them, because after they died they would have nothing. The thing that most drew them to God was the Christians’ expectation of a good life after death.
    At the time when people first believed, there was a foolish king in India. He did not care about God or his power, since he believed that his knowledge and wealth came from other gods, and not from God the Creator. This king, called Avenir, took great pleasure in his reign and he was confident in his rule, for he believed that nothing could destroy or diminish him. He was greatly renowned, and his subjects served him willingly, but in serving their king they opposed the holy church.
    King Avenir vanquished all his foes, and he was wealthy, with many friends and fiefs, but his discernment was poor. He spent his time pursuing pleasure and did not realize that his great power impoverished him. He was most rich and handsome, but as you know, gold is less prized when laid over tin; when enamel shows beneath the gold, the vessel has less value. Similarly, the king was fulfilled outside but empty inside. His body was full, but his soul was empty. The body enjoyed its pleasures, but the soul slept in a cruel bed. There was peril in these pleasures, and the body’s pleasure was tainted because it put the soul in sin. (At that time, as I understand it, the first growth of Christian belief flowered, and those who believed in God were strong in their faith. More learning, enlightenment, and veneration of the holy