Acts of Judas Thomas · Syriac · Bevan's 105 couplets
The Hymn of the Pearl
ܡܕܪܫܐ ܕܝܗܘܕܐ ܬܐܡܐ ܫܠܝܚܐ ܕܒܐܬܪܐ ܕܗ̈ܢܕܘܝܐ
When I was a small child, living in my kingdom, in my father's house,
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and taking my delight in the riches and splendours of those who raised me,
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from the East, our homeland, my parents gave me provision for the road and sent me out.
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From the wealth of our treasury they had already bound up a load for me,
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great it was, and yet light, so that I could carry it by myself:
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gold from the land of the upper ones (?), and silver of Gazzak the great,
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and rubies of India, and agates (?) from Qashan.
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And they girded me with adamant, which crushes iron.
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And they took from me the shining robe that in their love they had made for me,
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and my purple toga, measured and woven to my height.
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And they made a compact with me and wrote it in my heart, so that it would not be forgotten:
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"If you go down into Egypt and bring back the one pearl
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that lies in the middle of the sea, coiled round by the hissing serpent,
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you shall put on your shining robe and your toga that lies over it,
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and with your brother, our second, you shall be heir in our kingdom."
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I left the East and went down, and two couriers were with me,
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for the road was dangerous and hard, and I was very young to travel it.
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I crossed the borders of Maishan, the gathering-place of the merchants of the East,
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and I reached the land of Babel and went in through the walls of Sarbug.
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I went down into Egypt, and my companions parted from me.
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I went straight to the serpent and lodged close by his dwelling,
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waiting for him to drowse and fall asleep, so that I could take my pearl from him.
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And being single and alone, I was a stranger to those I lodged among.
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A son of my own race, a free man, one of the Easterners, I saw there,
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- * * *
a youth, fair and gracious, a son of [...] (?) [...]
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- * * *
[...] [...] and he came and attached himself to me.
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I made him my confidant, a companion with whom I shared my goods.
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I warned him against the Egyptians and against keeping company with the defiled.
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And I dressed in clothes like theirs, so that they would not shun me as one who had come from outside
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to take the pearl, and rouse the serpent against me.
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But somehow or other they perceived that I was not their countryman,
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and they mixed their cunning with me, and they gave me their food to taste.
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I forgot that I was a son of kings, and I served their king.
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I forgot the pearl for which my parents had sent me,
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and under the weight of their [food?] I lay down in a deep sleep.
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All these things that befell me my parents perceived, and they grieved for me.
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A proclamation was made in our kingdom that everyone should hasten to our gate:
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kings and chiefs of Parthia, and all the nobles of the East.
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They wove a plan for me, that I should not be left in Egypt,
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and they wrote me a letter, and every noble set his name to it:
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"From your father, the King of kings, and your mother, who rules the East,
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and from your brother, our second: to you, our son in Egypt, peace.
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Wake and rise from your sleep, and hear the words of our letter.
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Remember that you are a son of kings; see whom you have served in slavery.
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Remember the pearl for which you hurried to Egypt.
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Call to mind your shining robe, and remember your splendid toga,
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that you may put it on and be adorned, when your name is read in the book of the valiant,
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and with your brother, our viceroy, you shall be with him in our kingdom."
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And my letter was a letter that the King sealed with his right hand,
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against the wicked, the children of Babel, and the bitter demons of Sarbug.
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It flew in the likeness of an eagle, the king of all the birds;
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it flew and settled beside me and became all speech.
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At its voice and the sound of its rustling I started up and rose from my sleep.
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I took it up and kissed it, and I loosed its seal (?) and read.
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And just as it was traced upon my heart, so were the words of my letter written.
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I remembered that I was a son of kings, and my freedom longed for its own nature.
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I remembered the pearl for which I had been sent to Egypt,
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and I began to charm the fearsome, hissing serpent.
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I lulled him to sleep and laid him down, for I spoke my father's name over him,
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and the name of our second, and of my mother, the queen of the East.
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And I snatched the pearl and turned to go back to my father's house.
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Their filthy and unclean garment I stripped off and left in their land,
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and I set my course straight to come to the light of our homeland, the East.
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And my letter, my awakener, I found before me on the road;
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as it had woken me with its voice, so now it guided me with its light.
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[...] (obscure: of silk?) it shone before me with its form,
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and with its voice and its guidance it again spurred on my haste,
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- * * *
[...] and with its love it drew me on.
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I went out and passed by Sarbug; I left Babel on my left,
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and I came to Maishan the great, the harbour of the merchants,
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- * * *
which sits on the shore of the sea. [...]
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And my shining robe, which I had taken off, and the toga that was wrapped with it,
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from the heights of Ramtha and Reqan (Bevan: of Hyrcania) my parents had sent there
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by the hand of their treasurers, who were trusted with it for their faithfulness.
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And because I did not remember its fashion, for I had left it in my father's house as a child,
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suddenly, as I met it, the garment seemed to me like a mirror of myself.
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I saw it whole in my whole self, and in it I faced my whole self,
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for we were two in distinction and yet one in a single likeness.
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And the treasurers too, who brought it to me, I saw in the same way:
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that they were two, yet of one likeness, for one royal sign was traced on them,
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of the one whose hands returned to me my deposit (?) and my wealth through them:
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my shining robe, adorned, adorned with glorious colours,
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with gold and with beryls, with rubies and agates,
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and sardonyxes of varied hue; it too was made ready in its height.
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And with stones of adamant all its seams were fastened,
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and the image of the King of kings was worked and painted all over it,
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and like sapphire stones its colours were varied.
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And again I saw that all over it the motions of knowledge were stirring,
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and I saw it making itself ready as if to speak.
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I heard the sound of its songs, which it murmured to those who (?) carried it:
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"I am the one, active in deeds, for whom they raised me before my father,
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and I also felt in myself that my stature was growing with his labours."
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And with its kingly motions it poured itself wholly towards me,
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and from the hands of its givers it hurried, that I might take it.
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And love urged me too to run to meet it and receive it,
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and I stretched out and received it. With the beauty of its colours I adorned myself,
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and in my toga of brilliant colours I wrapped myself entirely.
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I put it on and went up to the gate of greeting and homage.
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I bowed my head and paid homage to the splendour of my father who had sent it to me,
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for I had done his commands, and he had done what he promised.
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And at the gate of his princes I mingled with his nobles,
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for he rejoiced in me and received me, and I was with him in his kingdom.
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And with the voice of [...] (?) all his servants praise him.
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And he promised that to the gate of the King of kings I would hasten with him,
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and with my gift and my pearl I would appear with him before our King.
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The Hymn and the library
Where the prince’s journey meets Suhrawardī’s Occidental Exile, Ibn Sīnā’s Ode on the Soul and Plotinus. Each is marked by kind; the grounds for the verdict are on the About page.
Sent out from the East
resonance: a shared image or story shape; no route documentedܡܢ ܡܕܢܚܐ ܡܬܢmen madnḥā mātan, “from the East, our home”
Both stories begin with a child of a noble house of the East who leaves home. The Hymn's prince is provisioned and sent; Suhrawardī's pair go out hunting and are caught. The shape is shared; the reasons for leaving differ. AI
- al-Ghurba ¶1, ¶3 →
The narrator sets out with his brother ʿĀṣim from Transoxiana, and the townspeople know them as children of the elder al-Hādī of Yemen. In Suhrawardī's symbolism Yemen, the right hand, stands for the East of light.
- al-Ghurba ¶1, ¶3 →
Down into Egypt, the city of the West
resonance: a shared image or story shape; no route documentedܢܚܬܬ ܠܝ ܠܓܘ ܡܨܪܝܢnḥetet lī lgaw meṣrēn, “I went down into Egypt”
Egypt in the Hymn and the Maghrib in the Recital play the same part: the low country of matter and captivity. Egypt as the land of bondage is biblical and Quranic; Qayrawān is Suhrawardī's own choice of a western city. AI
- al-Ghurba ¶2, ¶4, ¶7 →
They fall into 'the town whose people are oppressors' (Q 4:75), Qayrawān, and are chained at the bottom of a well where the darkness is layered 'one above another' (Q 24:40).
- al-ʿAyniyya v. 1, v. 15 →
The dove comes down from the loftiest station, and the ode asks why she was cast to the bottom of the abyss.
- al-Ghurba ¶2, ¶4, ¶7 →
Their food, their clothes, and forgetting
resonance: a shared image or story shape; no route documentedܛܥܝܬ ܕܒܪ ܡ̈ܠܟܐ ܐܢܐṭʿēt d-bar malkē ʾenā, “I forgot that I was a son of kings”
Hymn, verses 29, 32, 33, 34, 35
The Hymn's prince eats the Egyptians' food and falls into a deep sleep; Suhrawardī's captives are allowed up to the palace only by night and fall back into the pit by day. In the Hymn the verb for remembering is ʿhed, the root of Arabic ʿahd 'covenant': the compact written in his heart (v. 11) is what he forgets and what the letter makes him remember (vv. 44–46, 56–57). This root link is a cognate, not a borrowing (see the word panel). AI
- al-Ghurba ¶11 →
The father's letter reproaches them: 'How often have we stirred your longing, yet you did not long; and summoned you, yet you did not set out.'
- al-ʿAyniyya v. 5 →
'I think she has forgotten the covenants she made in the sanctuary': the dove's forgetting uses the word of the compact, ʿahd, which is also the Syriac root of 'remember' in the Hymn (ܥܗܕ ʿhed).
- al-Ghurba ¶11 →
The letter from the father
resonance: a shared image or story shape; no route documentedܦܪܚܬ ܒܕܡܘܬ ܢܫܪܐprāḥat ba-dmūt nešrā, “it flew in the likeness of an eagle”
Hymn, verses 40, 41, 42, 43, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55
The strongest likeness in the two stories. In the Hymn the letter, sealed with the King's right hand, flies like an eagle, lands beside the sleeper and 'became all speech'; the prince reads in it what was already written on his heart. In the Recital a bird carries a letter from the father. Suhrawardī's bird is the hoopoe of the Quran, who brings 'certain tidings' from Sheba and carries Solomon's letter (Q 27:20–31); the Recital quotes those verses. So the Recital's letter has a Quranic source of its own, and its likeness to the Hymn is a resonance. The Syriac word for letter, ʾeggartā, is an old Akkadian loan and has no Arabic cognate; Suhrawardī says ruqʿa and risāla. AI
- al-Ghurba ¶9–12 →
On a moonlit night the hoopoe brings a letter in its beak, 'from al-Hādī, your father', opening 'In the name of God', with the way of deliverance written in it.
- al-Ghurba ¶9–12 →
The serpent and the dragon
resonance: a shared image or story shape; no route documentedܚܘܝܐ ܕܚܝܠܐ ܘܣܝܩܐḥewyā dḥīlā w-sīqā, “the fearsome, hissing serpent”
A weak likeness. The Hymn's serpent guards the pearl in the sea and is lulled by the father's name; Suhrawardī's dragon is one figure in a cosmic tableau, not the guardian of what the hero seeks. The Arabic word for serpent in general, ḥayya, is a true cognate of Syriac ḥewyā (both from the root of life). AI
- al-Ghurba ¶33 →
A lamp is placed 'in the mouth of a dragon (tinnīn) dwelling in the tower of a water-wheel', over the Sea of Qulzum.
- al-Ghurba ¶33 →
Taking off the soiled garment
resonance: a shared image or story shape; no route documentedܘܠܒܘܫܗܘܢ ܨܐܐ ܘܛܡܐܐ ܫܠܚܬw-lbūšhon ṣaʾā w-ṭamʾā šelḥet, “their filthy and unclean garment I stripped off”
Shedding a garment as the start of the return appears in all three. The Hymn goes further: its bright robe waits at home and is put on again (vv. 72–98); the Recital has no robe of glory. AI
- al-Ghurba ¶6, ¶13 →
The captives may climb up only 'stripped bare'; the letter tells the traveller, at the valley of the Nile, to 'shake out the hem of your robe'.
- al-ʿAyniyya v. 13 →
The dove sets out, leaving the body behind, 'bound in alliance with the dust'.
- al-Ghurba ¶6, ¶13 →
The robe as a mirror of the self
resonance: a shared image or story shape; no route documentedܠܡܚܙܝܬܝ ܠܒܘܫܐ ܕܡܬ ܠܝl-maḥzītī lbūšā dmat lī, “the garment seemed to me like a mirror of myself”
'We were two in distinction and yet one in one likeness' (v. 78): the heavenly double met at the end of the journey. Suhrawardī's fishes who are 'your likenesses' belong to the same family of images, and Corbin built his theme of the celestial twin partly on these two texts. Resonance only. AI
- al-Ghurba ¶38 →
At the Spring of Life the traveller asks about the fishes; they answer that they are 'your likenesses', children of one father.
- al-Ghurba ¶38 →
The return to the East, and the fall back
resonance: a shared image or story shape; no route documentedܠܢܘܗܪܐ ܕܡܬܢ ܡܕܢܚܐl-nuhrā d-mātan madnḥā, “to the light of our home, the East”
Hymn, verses 61, 63, 98, 99, 101, 102, 104, 105
The Hymn ends in arrival: the prince, robed, enters the King's gate and will go on to the King of kings. The Recital ends in a return to exile, with a delight that remains. The difference is as telling as the likeness. AI
- al-Ghurba ¶39–43 →
On Mount Sinai the traveller meets the father, whose lineage runs up to the supreme Ancestor.
- al-Ghurba ¶40, ¶44 →
But he must go back to the prison of the West: 'I fell from the heights into the abyss.'
- al-Ghurba ¶39–43 →
The guide that goes ahead
resonance: a shared image or story shape; no route documentedܘܒܗܕܝܘܬܗܿw-ba-hadyūtāh, “and with its guidance”
The letter that woke him now leads him with its light. The Syriac word for its guidance, hadyūtā, is from the root h-d-y, a true cognate of Arabic hudā, 'guidance'; the Recital's father is called al-Hādī, 'the Guide', from the same root. The cognate is certain; that Suhrawardī echoes the Hymn is not claimed. AI
- al-Ghurba ¶15 →
'The hoopoe went on ahead.'
- al-Ghurba ¶15 →
Where the two did meet: an Arabic yoga book, after Suhrawardī
reception: a documented later use of the HymnAn Arabic recension of the Amṛtakuṇḍa (the 'Pool of Nectar', in Arabic Ḥawḍ al-ḥayāt or Mirʾāt al-maʿānī), made by a translator trained in Suhrawardī's Illuminationist school, probably in the fifteenth century, opens with a frame story of the soul's descent 'deriving ultimately from the Hymn of the Pearl', set beside an extract from Suhrawardī's own treatise on love. This is the one documented meeting of the two traditions, and it comes three centuries after Suhrawardī. AI
Context: the soul's descent in Plotinus
contextNeoplatonic writers tell the same arc philosophically: the soul comes down, forgets its origin, and turns back (epistrophē). This is context, not a source: nothing shows the Hymn's poet read Plotinus, who was writing in Rome at about the same time. AI
- Ennead VI.9, ch. 9 →
The soul, 'fallen' into the body, is like a daughter who left her father's house for a mortal marriage and longs to return.
- Ennead VI.9, ch. 9 →
Context: gnostic, Manichaean or Christian?
contextThe Hymn is Syriac, probably of the third century, from the region of Edessa, and most likely an interpolation into the Acts of Thomas (Russell, Encyclopaedia Iranica). Readings differ: most scholars call it gnostic; Quispel took it for a pre-Manichaean Christian poem; Ferreira places it in the Manichaean trajectory; Poirier speaks of a milieu of diverse influences. Its Parthian setting (Maishan, the nobles of the East, Persian loanwords) is not in doubt. AI
Syriac: the Digital Syriac Corpus transcription (no. 338, CC BY 4.0: M. Oez, J. E. Walters) of the text of Wright (1871) and Bevan (1897), checked against Bevan's print, with twelve corrections listed on the About page. Word analysis, glosses, roots and Arabic correspondences are by AI (Claude) and marked; Payne Smith's dictionary (1903) is linked page by page. Wright, Bevan, Mead and Bonnet's Greek are public domain; James (1924) is public domain in the US and the UK. How this text was established.