Page:Barlaam and Josaphat. English lives of Buddha.djvu/60

liv and was the original of our Barlaam. Both of these Buddhistic books were translated into Pehlevi in the reign of Chosroes (531-79 A.D.), and both proved attractive to all the various sects—Buddhistic, Moslem, Nestorian—that found a common point of contact in East Iran. Both were almost immediately translated into Arabic and Syriac, and passed from the latter into almost all the languages of Europe. But the beast-tales of Bidpai were incapable of any dogmatic colouring, and were left unchanged in the European versions. The story of the conversion of the Bodhisattva by the Bhagavan was, on the other hand, admirably adapted for propagandist interpolation and modification, and was therefore transformed by the Greek translator into the legend of St. Barlaam and St. Josaphat, as it afterwards spread through Europe. It was thus the difference of the framework which led to a difference in fate between the Bidpai and the Barlaam legends. But in both cases the attractiveness of the books consisted, not so much in the framework, as in that which it enframed, to which we now turn.