Page:Barlaam and Josaphat. English lives of Buddha.djvu/103



[The following abstract gives the main results of the restoration of the original legend made from the various early versions, not derived from the Greek, by Kuhn, pp. 15-33. I have run his §§3 and 4 into one, so that after 3, his sections are numbered one higher than mine. In the annotations, Arab, references to the pages of the Bombay Kitâb., Gr. to the pages of Boissonade's Greek text, Heb. references to the chapters ("Gates") of Ibn Chisdai. For parables, see Appendix II.]

There lived once a king in India mighty and powerful, who knew not the true faith, and persecuted grievously its adherents. Now he had no son to follow him, and this grieved him sorely. One night his chief wife dreamed that a huge white elephant came down to her from the air, but injured