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0382 The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2
The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 / Page 382 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000269
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und Englische Literatur, II. p. 314 seqq., comparing the Book of Barlaam and
Joasaph with the work of Barthélemy St. Hilaire on Buddha, arrived at the same
conclusion.

In 1880, Professor T. W. Rhys Davids has devoted some pages (xxxvi.-xli.) in his
Buddhist Birth Stories; or, Jataka Tales, to The Barlaam and Josaphat Literature,
and we note from them that: "Pope Sixtus the Fifth (1585-1590) authorised a
particular Martyrologium, drawn up by Cardinal Baronius, to be used throughout the
Western Church." In that work are included not only the saints first canonised at
Rome, but all those who, having been already canonised elsewhere, were then
acknowledged by the Pope and the College of Rites to be saints of the Catholic
Church of Christ. Among such, under the date of the 27th of November, are included
"The holy Saints Barlaam and Josaphar, of India, on the borders of Persia, whose
wonderful acts Saint John of Damascus has described. Where and when they were
first canonised, I have been unable, in spite of much investigation, to ascertain.
Petrus de Natalibus, who was Bishop of Equilium, the modern Jesolo, near Venice,
from 1370 to 1400, wrote a Martyrology called Catalogus Sanctorum; and in it,
among the 'Saints,' he inserts both Barlaam and Josaphat, giving also a short
account of them derived from the old Latin translation of St. John of Damascus. It
is from this work that Baronius, the compiler of the authorised Martyrology now in
use, took over the names of these two saints, Barlaam and Jossaphat. But, so far as I
have been able to ascertain, they do not occur in any martyrologies or lists of saints of
the Western Church older than that of Petrus de Natalibus. In the corresponding
manual of worship still used in the Greek Church, however, we find, under 26th
August, the name 'of the holy Ioseph, son of Abenêr, King of India.' Barlaam is
not mentioned, and is not therefore recognised as a saint in the Greek Church. No
history is added to the simple statement I have quoted; and I do not know on what
authority it rests. But there is no doubt that it is in the East, and probably among
the records of the ancient church of Syria, that a final solution of this question should
be sought. 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 Müller, 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 Christen-
dom as a Christian saint!" Professor T. W. Rhys Davids gives further a Biblio-
graphy, 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 Biblio-
graphisch—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 Yûdâsaf (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
Yûdâsaf, who could not, in his Christian disguise, arrive at the truth by himself like a
Bodhisatva. 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