Page:Barlaam and Josaphat. English lives of Buddha.djvu/73

Rh by the Emperor, in which some gold is hidden. This has only the faintest similarity with the Caskets Story, and I have, therefore, removed it and its derivates from the pedigree, which is thus entirely confined to the story we know so well from ShakspereShakespeare [sic].

2. The Sower.—The "Parable of the Sower," mostly as it is found in the Synoptic Gospels, occurs also in all the earliest versions of the Barlaam, Arabic, Georgian, Hebrew, and Greek. At first sight this fact does not seem to need much comment, but in reality it forms, perhaps, the chief puzzle in the critical problem of Barlaam; for it constitutes almost the only piece of definitely Christian origin in the Ur-Barlaam, as far as we can trace it. It is, therefore, the only piece of evidence for Dr. Kuhn's contention that Barlaam was originally written in Pehlevi by a Nestorian Christian for the polemical purposes of his faith. One might argue, in reply, that one parable does not make a theology, and that a Christian allegory might be used by a Buddhist somewhat in the way that Stanley or Jowett might use a rousing sentence of Mahomet or Buddha to point their Broad Church morals.