This Pehlevi Version Of
The Newly-Formed Christian Legend Was Translated Into Syriac, And From
Syriac Was Drawn A Georgian
Version, and, in the first half of the 7th
century, the Greek Text of John, a monk of the convent
Of St. Saba, near
Jerusalem, by some turned into St. John of Damascus, who added to the story
some long theological discussions. From this Greek, it was translated into
all the known languages of Europe, while the Pehlevi version being rendered
into Arabic, was adapted by the Mussulmans and the Jews to their own
creeds. (H. Zotenberg, Mem. sur le texte et les versions orientales du
Livre de Barlaam et Joasaph, Not. et Ext. XXVIII. Pt. I. pp. 1-166; G.
Paris, Saint Josaphat in Rev. de Paris, 1'er Juin, 1895, and Poemes et
Legendes du Moyen Age, pp. 181-214.)
Mr. Joseph Jacobs published in London, 1896, a valuable little book,
Barlaam and Josaphat, English Lives of Buddha, in which he comes to this
conclusion (p. xli.): "I regard the literary history of the Barlaam
literature as completely parallel with that of the Fables of Bidpai.
Originally Buddhistic books, both lost their specifically Buddhistic
traits before they left India, and made their appeal, by their parables,
more than by their doctrines. Both were translated into Pehlevi in the
reign of Chosroes, and from that watershed floated off into the
literatures of all the great creeds. In Christianity alone,
characteristically enough, one of them, the Barlaam book, was surcharged
with dogma, and turned to polemical uses, with the curious result that
Buddha became one of the champions of the Church.
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