complete or in part in an immense number of manuscripts. An uncritical age attributed it to John of Damascus, among whose works it appears; but this tradition cannot be maintained. The book was long read as veritable history, and accordingly the Roman Martyrology honours its two heroes as saints and assigns the 27th of November as their day. But its remarkable resemblance to the legendary life of Buddha in the Latita Vistara led to its being traced back to that Indian source by Dr. Liebrecht.[1] Josaphat is the son of the king of "the land of the Æthiopians called India," who is kept by his father in the royal park and palace in close seclusion so that he may see nothing of the evil or misery of the world, and especially that he may not come into contact with Christianity and monasticism, which his father is endeavouring to repress. But he gets leave to ride abroad, and then sees a cripple and a blind man, with the result that he is greatly depressed and saddened. While he is in this state he receives a visit from Barlaam, a monk disguised as a merchant, who has been sent to India by a Divine vision. The result is Josaphat's conversion. When the king learns of this he is much distressed, and in order to distract his son's attention divides with him the government of his realm, but at length he too is led over to Christianity by his son's influence. Finally, Josaphat renounces his high position, goes on a journey in quest of his spiritual father Barlaam, whom after two years of weary wandering at length he finds living as a hermit in a cave. He stays with Barlaam for the rest of his life, and there the dead bodies of the saints are found long after untouched by decay in the odour of sanctity.
It remains for us to notice one other form of literature originated in this period, the Greek Christian poetry, consisting chiefly of hymns. Much of this has been made
- ↑ See Ebert's Jahrbuch für rom. und engl. Literatur, 1860, ii. pp. 314–334; cf. St. Hilaire, Le Bouddha et sa Religion, and Max Müller, on "Migration of Fables," Contemporary Review, vol. xiv. pp. 572–599.
