思想史的観点からみた東西文化交流の問題点

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When we discuss the role of the Muslim world in the cultural interaction between the East and the West, it is necessary to take into consideration the influences which the civilization of Islam has received from other civilizations as well as those of Islam upon others. Many attempts have been made to clarify how Sufism came into being in the Islamic spirituality. Some attribute its origin to Christian influences; some to Neo-platonistic, some to Buddhistic, some to the Vedanta, and others explain it in terms of the indigenous development of primitive Islam. It is my present objective to review those major studies done so far which conclude that Sufism originated mainly under the influence of Indian thoughts including Buddhism, and to point out some problems involved in the study of the cross-cultural interaction of ideas.
It is Alfred von Kremer who first asserted seriously the Indian origin of Sufism in 1868. He characterized the current of the Sufi thought from al-Muhasibi through al-Hallaj as “pantheistic”, and thus tried to see its origin in Indian “pantheism”. This thesis laid the foundation for the subsequent study of Sufism, and was adopted by R. Dozy and I. Goldziher in its main contention. It found its most vigorous protagonist in R. Hartmann and M. Horten, and recently in R. C. Zaehner.
The common drawback in all these theses, however, is that the factual and historical supports which they enumerate for their contentions are not convincingly strong enough. In other words, there is seen in them somewhat naive supposition that “similarity” of ideas is necessarily due to cultural interaction or influence. What needs to be done hereafter is not only to search for the factual grounds of the Indian origin of Sufism, but also to make a closer and more systematic comparative study of the two cultural traditions, one of which may have influenced the other. This methodological reconsideration is particularly needed in the study of mysticism, which shows fascinatirgly similar quality among different religious traditions.