Page:Barlaam and Josaphat. English lives of Buddha.djvu/55

 Rh suggestion seems to have more for it than Baron von Rosen's. For there is little doubt that, as a matter of fact, Barlaam is himself a variant of the Buddha, and thus a doublet of Josaphat. For Barlaam's speeches give very often the Buddhistic doctrine in the Buddha's own words: so that, in the last resort, our fable tells of the conversion of the man destined to be Buddha by a man who has already attained Buddhahood, and the title, "Barlaam and Josaphat," would adequately indicate the subject to Indian ears in the form Bhagavan Bodhisattvascha. We get the same doubling in the Buddha legend when the Buddha converts to his doctrines a rich merchant's son named Yasoda, who has himself performed the Great Renunciation, and whose history is therefore obviously a variant of the Buddha's.

We have seen that other names still retain traces of their Indian origin. Josaphat's tutor,