Buddha's life as a Byzantine best-seller - with a little help from Arab meditation

Sergio Basso is speaking at the Centre for the Study of Islam on Monday 9 November, as part of their Monday Majlis series. The talk is online, with a discussion to follow, and it centres on Barlaam and Ioasaph, a medieval tale that's long been read as a Christianised version of the life of the historical Buddha, Śākyamuni Gautama.

Basso is challenging that standard view. Instead of the usual 'tree model' of textual transmission, where a story branches out from a single source, he proposes a 'carousel model' to explain how these stories migrated in a spiral across India, Iran, Syria and Greece in the Late Antique world. It's a different way of thinking about how a story travels across borders and centuries, and the talk will lay out why the carousel fits the evidence better.

Basso brings a bit of an unusual mix to the subject. He combines an education in Asian Languages and Classics with a career as a film director, with work screened at international festivals. He's lived and worked in China and earned a PhD in Philology (Byzantine Studies) from Roma Tre University. The talk draws on his latest book, Dynamics of Transmission of Barlaam and Ioasaph: Along the Silk Road to Byzantium, published by De Gruyter.

The session is part of the Monday Majlis Series run by the Centre for the Study of Islam, and it's held online, so you can join from home. It starts at 17:00 on Monday 9 November, with a talk followed by a discussion.