Page:Barlaam and Josaphat. English lives of Buddha.djvu/83

lxxvii thing should be said as to its pictorial representations. In most of the illustrated editions of the Bidpai the illustration of this parable is given; one will be found, e.g., in my edition of the first English version of the Bidpai in this series, p. 61. Quite at the other end of the world the "Man in the Well" can be found illustrated in a Chinese chap-book dealing with the story, which is described and figured in the Royal Asiatic Society Journal, China Branch, i. 94. The parable also formed the subject for church decoration, and it is still to be found on the walls of several Italian churches. We have here a further example of that migration of illustrations to which I referred in a former volume of this series (Bidpai, pp. xix.-xxiv.).

4. The Three Friends.—This parable is remarkable for the number of dramatic versions to which it has given rise. But before discussing these it is worth while referring to the possibility that this parable reached the West from the East before the Barlaam was composed. There is, indeed, a somewhat similar parable, given by Petrus Alfonsi, a Spanish Jewish convert of the early twelfth century, in