simply a corruption of the word Bodisat, that title of the future Buddha so constantly repeated in the Buddhist Birth Stories.[1] Now a life of the Buddha forms the introduction to our Jātaka Book, and St. John's romance also contains a number of fables and stories, most of which have been traced back to the same source.[2]
This book, the first religious romance published in a Western language, became very popular indeed, and, like the Arabic Kalilah and Dimnah, was translated into many other European languages. It exists in Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, German, English, Swedish, and Dutch. This will show how widely it was read, and how much its moral tone pleased the taste of the Middle Ages. It was also translated as early as 1204 into Icelandic, and has even been published in the Spanish dialect used in the Philippine Islands!
Now it was a very ancient custom among Christians to recite at the most sacred part of their most sacred service (in the so-called Canon of the Mass, immediately
- ↑ Joasaph is in Arabic written also Yūdasatf; and this, through a confusion between the Arabic letters Y and B, is for Bodisat. See, for the history of these changes, Reinaud, 'Memoire sur l'Inde,' 1849, p. 91; quoted with approbation by Weber, 'Indische Streifen,' iii. 57.
- ↑ The Buddhist origin was first pointed out by Laboulaye in the Debats, July, 1859; and more fully by Liebrecht, in the 'Jahrbuch für romanische und englische Literatur,' 1860. See also Littré, Journal des Savans, 1865, who fully discusses, and decides in favour of the romance being really the work of St. John of Damascus. I hope, in a future volume, to publish a complete analysis of St. John's work; pointing out the resemblances between it and the Buddhist lives of Gotama, and giving parallel passages wherever the Greek adopts, not only the Buddhist ideas, but also Buddhist expressions.
