Barlaam and Josaphat

Barlaam and Josaphat, one of the most widely-spread religious romances of the middle ages, relating the conversion of the Indian prince Josaphat by the hermit Barlaam, his subsequent resistance of all forms of temptation, and his becoming a hermit. The story, however, has been discovered to be nothing more or less than a Christianised version of the legendary history of Buddha, agreeing with it in all essentials and many details. The very name Joasaph is merely the Buddha under another name, the word Joasaph or Josaphat being simply a corruption of the word Bodisat. Rhys Davids notes that Joasaph is in Arabic written also Yūdasatf; and this, through a confusion between the Arabic letters Y and B, is for Bodisatva, a title of the future Buddha which is constantly repeated in the Buddhist Birth Stories. The Buddhist origin of the romance was first pointed out by Laboulaye in 1859, but was first proved by Dr Felix Liebrecht in 1860. The celebrated theological writer, John of Damascus, who flourished in the 8th century at the court of the calif of Bagdad, and afterwards became a monk, is regarded by many scholars (such as Max Müller, Gaston Paris, and Rhys Davids) as the author or rather translator of the original Greek text, which was first published by M. de Boissonade in the 4th volume of his Anecdota (Paris, 1832). M. Zotenberg, in his edition of a French version, published in collaboration with M. Paul Meyer in 1864, expressed the opinion, adopted also by Littré, that the work had probably been composed in Egypt, and that it was anterior to Islamism; but M. Zotenberg has since made out a strong case to prove that the Greek text was edited in Syria in the first half of the 7th century by a monk named John, belonging to the convent of Saint Saba, that it contains traces of the religious controversies peculiar to that time, and that this version has been the source of all the translations and known imitations. Whatever its ultimate origin, this romance quickly became popular, and was translated into many European languages. It exists in Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, German, English, Swedish, and Dutch versions, and was even translated as early as 1204 into Icelandic. In the official Martyrologium drawn up by Cardinal Baronius for use in the Western Church, and authorised by Pope Sixtus V. (1585-90), appear, under the date of the 27th of November, 'the holy saints Barlaam and Josaphat of India, on the borders of Persia, whose wonderful acts St John of Damascus has described.' It is impossible to discover at what precise date their canonisation was first decreed, but they appear in the Catalogus Sanctorum of Petrus de Natalibus, who was Bishop of Equilibrium from 1370 to 1400, and it was from this source that Cardinal Baronius adopted their names into his authorised Martyrology. The name of 'the holy Josaph, son of Abenêr, king of India,' appears in the corresponding manual of worship in use in the Greek Church under date of August 26. Professor Max Müller points out that Gotama the Buddha, under the name of St Josaphat, is at the present day officially recognised and honoured throughout Catholic Christendom as a saint of the Church of Christ, and adds that 'few saints have a better claim to the title than Buddha; and no one either in the Greek or in the Roman Church need be ashamed of having paid to Buddha's memory the honour that was intended for St Josaphat, the prince, the hermit, and the saint.' See 'Die Quellen des Barlaam und Josaphat,' in Felix Liebrecht's Zur Volkskunde (1879); Max Müller, 'On the Migration of Fables,' in vol. iii. of Chips from a German Workshop (1880); Buddhist Birth Stories, by Rhys Davids (1880); Barlaam et Joasaph, by Zotenberg (1866); Halévy in the Revue de l'Histoire des Religions (1877); Barlaam and Josaphat, by Joseph Jacobs (1896); and for the identity of part of the text with the long lost Apology of Aristides, see the edition of the Apology by Rendel Harris and Robinson (1891).