Page:Barlaam and Josaphat. English lives of Buddha.djvu/86

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INTRODUCTION

nental ones. Dr. Logeman, on the contrary, considers the Dutch version the source of the subsequent ones. I will not attempt to decide when such doctors disagree, but will merely remark that Academic dramas on the same theme continued to be composed by Continental scholars throughout the seventeenth century. These plays, whose titles are given by Dr. Goedeke, form, perhaps, the most striking proof of the popularity of the parable of Barlaam.

5. Man and Bird.—The story of the man who caught a nightingale and let it go on promise of receiving three pieces of advice is well known in English Literature as having formed the subject of one of Lydgate's pieces, and is equally well known in Germany, being the subject of a version by Wieland. Its earliest appearance is in the Barlaam Literature, but it also occurs in the very early Disciplina Clericalis of Petrus Alfonsi. It is, of course, possible that the Spanish convert got the allegory from Barlaam, but we know that several other of his allegories were derived from Eastern oral sources. It is, therefore, possible that he obtained the Legend of the "Man and Bird" from some other derivative of the Indian original That it had an Indian