Some Of The More Learned Of
The Numerous Writers Who Translated Or Composed New Works On The Basis Of
The
Story of Josaphat, have pointed out in their notes that he had been
canonised; and the hero of the romance
Is usually called St. Josaphat in
the titles of these works, as will be seen from the Table of the Josaphat
literature below. But Professor Liebrecht, when identifying Josaphat with
the Buddha, took no notice of this; and it was Professor Max Mueller, who
has done so much to infuse the glow of life into the dry bones of Oriental
scholarship, who first pointed out the strange fact - almost incredible,
were it not for the completeness of the proof - that Gotama the Buddha,
under the name of St. Josaphat, is now officially recognised and honoured
and worshipped throughout the whole of Catholic Christendom as a Christian
saint!" Professor T.W. Rhys Davids gives further a Bibliography, pp.
xcv.-xcvii.
M.H. Zotenberg wrote a learned memoir (N. et Ext. XXVIII. Pt. I.) in
1886 to prove that the Greek Text is not a translation but the original of
the Legend. There are many MSS. of the Greek Text of the Book of Barlaam
and Joasaph in Paris, Vienna, Munich, etc., including ten MSS. kept in
various libraries at Oxford. New researches made by Professor E. Kuhn, of
Munich (Barlaam und Joasaph. Eine Bibliographisch-literargeschichtliche
Studie, 1893), seem to prove that during the 6th century, in that part of
the Sassanian Empire bordering on India, in fact Afghanistan, Buddhism and
Christianity were gaining ground at the expense of the Zoroastrian faith,
and that some Buddhist wrote in Pehlevi a Book of Yudasaf (Bodhisatva); a
Christian, finding pleasant the legend, made an adaptation of it from his
own point of view, introducing the character of the monk Balauhar (Barlaam)
to teach his religion to Yudasaf, who could not, in his Christian disguise,
arrive at the truth by himself like a Bodhisatva.
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