Page:Barlaam and Josaphat. English lives of Buddha.djvu/55

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xlix

BARLAAM IN INDIA.


suggestion seems to have more for it than Baron von Rosen's. For there is little doubt that, as a matter of fact, Barlaam is himself a variant of the Buddha, and thus a doublet of Josaphat. For Barlaam's speeches give very often the Buddhistic doctrine in the Buddha's own words: so that, in the last resort, our fable tells of the conversion of the man destined to be Buddha by a man who has already attained Buddhahood, and the title, "Barlaam and Josaphat," would adequately indicate the subject to Indian ears in the form Bhagavan Bodhisattvascha.[1] We get the same doubling in the Buddha legend when the Buddha converts to his doctrines a rich merchant's son named Yasoda,[2] who has himself performed the Great Renunciation, and whose history is therefore obviously a variant of the Buddha's.

We have seen that other names still retain traces of their Indian origin. Josaphat's tutor,

  1. ↑ I have to thank my young friend, Master Leonard Magnus, for my knowledge how to conjoin two Sanskrit words. If there is anything incorrect, I must have misunderstood his instructions. I would add that Marco Polo's title for the Buddha "Sagamoni Borcar "== Sakyamuni Bhagavan.
  2. ↑ Vesselovsky would identify the name Joasaph with this Yasoda.
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