Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/133

Rh the antiquity of asceticism as a Christian practice; the description of future rewards and punishments; the enumeration of heathen religions and of the defects of each of them; the overthrow of idols and the refutation of heathen poets. It is in these latter sections of the Greek text that Professor Armitage Robinson recognised the early Apology for Christianity of Aristides. But of it, as of all the other voluminous teachings of the Greek, we find nothing in the Georgian; and in the Armenian similarly they are scarcely to be traced at all.

Another fact of much significance is this, that in the Georgian the proper names approach in their spelling very closely to the old Indian or Buddhist forms: e.g. Georgian Iodasaph is nearer than Josaphat to the Arabic Yudasaph and Bûdâsaph of the Bombay MS. (Sanskrit Bodhisattva). So the Georgian Thedma or Thedam is nearer to the Sanskrit Devadatta than the Greek Theudas, which is a misspelling suggested by the Acts. Zandani of the Georgian is nearer to the Sanskrit Chandaka and Burmese Sanna than Zardan of the Greek. Balavari is nearer to Bihalar than Barlaam. That it is still a favourite name in Georgian shows how popular this story has ever been in that country. Again Iabenes is nearer the original than Abenner, which, as Kuhn points out, is due to biblical influence (2 Sam. iii. 6). The Bombay text has Ganaisar. Lastly, in Georgian, the place Bolat, where the king Iabenes lived, is an easy corruption of Sawilabatt of the Bombay text, Buddhist Kapilavatthu.

The following translation has been made from a text preserved in the Bodleian codex Marsh, 438. This manuscript is an Armenian Menologion, that is to say, a collection of acts of martyrs, of homilies, and other pieces appropriate to,