『발라바리아니』에 나타난 불교사상의 기독교화에 대한 연구

Abstract

Throughout the Middle Ages the history of the saints Barlaam and Josafat was widely known in the East and West. But in the middle of the 19th century it was gotton to notice that this novel deals with the culmination of the cristianization of the Buddha legend. This legend, Lalitavistara, initiated its peregrination towards the West through the old Turkis(the manichaen version), the Middle Persian, the Arabic, the Georgian(the first cristianizated version) and the Greek versions, from which the Slavist versions were translated, and on the other hand it was translated the latin version. And from this version it was expanded to the western Europe. In this long route from India to Georgia the Buddha legend underwent the diverse phases of evolution, suffering the substantial alterations and finally in the Georgian version, The Balavariani, the hindi prince converted to the Christianity. Because of passing enormous zones during long time, the Buddha legend experienced many transformations. But each text of the peregrinations conserved the basic elements of its antecedents. Therefore although apparently The Balavariani has very little to do with the oriental legend, because his origin is the Buddhist legend, in its deep semantic structure and the most important thoughts there is great similarity with its distant antecedent. This article reviewed the various common thoughts between the Buddhist legend and The Balavariani. For all these aspects, in spite of the little probability that the author of The Balavariani knew on his origin or the buddhism, we can capture the Eastern elements or shades that are latent in The Balavariani.