Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/48

 THE BARLAAM AND JOSAPHAT LITERATURE.

A complete answer to the question with which the last digression started can only be given when each one of the two hundred and thirty- one fables of Planudes and his successors shall have been traced back to its original author. But — whatever that complete answer may be — the discoveries just pointed out are at least most strange and most instructive. And yet, if I mistake not, the history of the Jātaka Book contains hidden amongst its details a fact more unexpected and more striking still.

In the eighth century the Khalif of Bagdad was that Almansur at whose court was written the Arabic book Kalilah and Dimnah, afterwards translated by the learned Jews I have mentioned into Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. A Christian, high in office at his court, afterwards became a monk, and is well known, under the name of St. John of Damascus, as the author in Greek of many theological works in defence of the orthodox faith. Among these is a religious romance called 'Barlaam and Joasaph,' giving the history of an Indian prince who was converted by Barlaam and became a hermit. This history, the reader will be surprised to learn, is taken from the life of the Buddha; and Joasaph is merely the Buddha under another name, the word Joasaph, or Josaphat, being