BARLAAM and JOSAPHAT, Saints. These two saints appear in both the Greek and the Roman Martyrology, in the former under 26th August, in the latter under 27th November. Their story is in the highest degree worthy of note, because it is, in fact, a Christianized version of the Indian legendary history of the Buddha, Sakya Muni.
The remarkable parallel between Buddhistic ritual, costume, and discipline, and those which especially claim the title of Catholic in the Christian church, has often been recognized, even by the most faithful sons of Rome; 1 and though the parallel has perhaps never been elaborated as it might be, some of its more salient points are familiar. Still, many readers may be unaware that Sakya ΛIuni himself, or, as he was by birth, Siddharta, the son of Suddodhana, prince of Kapilavastu (in the north of modern Oudh), has found his way into the Roman calendar as a saint of the church.
The Christian story first appears in Greek among the works of St John of Damascus, an eminent divine, and an opponent of the Emperor Leo the Isaurian in the Iconoclastic movement, who flourished in the early part of the 8th century, and who, before he adopted the monastic life and devoted himself to theology, had held high office at the court of the caliph Abu Jâfar Almansûr, as his father Sergius is said to have done before him. 2...
The outline of the Greek story is as follows :—St Thomas had converted the people of India, and after the eremitic life originated in Egypt, many Indians adopted it. But a powerful pagan king arose who hated and persecuted the Christians, especially the ascetics. After this king, Abenncr by name, had long been childless, a boy greatly desired, and matchless in beauty, was born to him, and received the name of Josaphat. The king, in his joy, summons astrologers to predict the child’s destiny. They foretell glory and prosperity beyond those of all his predecessors. One sage, most learned of all, assents, but intimates that the scene of this glory will be, not the paternal kingdom, but another infinitely more exalted, and that the child will adopt the faith which his father persecutes.
The boy shows a thoughtful and devout turn. King Abenner, troubled by this and by the remembrance of the prediction, selects a secluded city, in which he causes a splendid palace to be built, where his son should abide, attended only by tutors and servants in the flower of youth and health. No stranger was to have access, and the boy was to be cognizant of none of the sorrows of humanity, such as poverty, disease, old age, or death, but only of what was pleasant, so that he should have no inducement to think of the future life; nor was he ever to hear a word of Christ and his religion.
Prince Josaphat grows up in this seclusion, acquires all kinds of knowledge, and exhibits singular endowments. At length, on his urgent prayer, the king reluctantly permits him to pass the limits of the palace, after having taken all precautions to keep painful objects out of sight. But through some neglect of orders, the prince one day encounters a leper and a blind man, and asks of his attendants with pain and astonishment what such a spectacle should mean. These, they tell him, are ills to which man is liable. Shall all men have such ills? he asks. And in the end he returns home in deep depression. Another day he falls in with a decrepit old man, and, stricken with dismay at the sight, renews his questions, and hears for the first time of death. And in how many years, continues the prince, does this fate befall man? and must he expect death as inevitable? Is there no way of escape? No means of eschewing this wretched state of decay? The attendants reply as may be imagined; and Josaphat goes home more pensive than ever, dwelling on the certainty of death, and on what shall be thereafter.
At this time Barlaam, an eremite of great sanctity and knowledge, dwelling in the wilderness of Sennaritis, divinely warned, 1 It has been alleged that Père Huc, on returning to Europe, was astonished to find his celebrated journey to Lhasa in the Index, on the ground of such recognition. But this seems to be untrue.
2 St John’s authorship of the story has been disputed. Prof. Max Müller, in the paper quoted below, seems to dispose sufficiently of the objections. None of the old editions of St John’s works contain the Greek of the story. This, Prof. Müller states, was first published in 1832 bv Boissonade, in his Analecta Gr<xca, vol. iv.
travels to India in the disguise of a merchant, and gains access to Prince Josaphat, to whom he imparts the Christian doctrine and commends the monastic life. Suspicion arises and Barlaam departs. But all attempts to shake the prince’s convictions fail. As a last resource the king sends for Theudas, a magician, who removes the prince’s attendants and substitutes seductive girls; but all their blandishments are resisted through prayer. The king abandons these efforts and associates his son in the government. The prince uses his power to promote religion, and everything prospers in his hands. At last Abenner himself yields to the faith, and after some years of penitence dies. Josaphat surrenders the kingdom to a friend called Barachias, and departs for the wilderness. After two years of painful search, and much buffeting by demons, he finds Barlaam. The latter dies, and Josaphat survives as a hermit many years. King Barachias afterwards arrives, and transfers the bodies of the two saints to India, where they are the source of many miracles.
Now this story is, in all essentials and in many details, mutatis mutandis, the story of Buddha. For particulars we must refer to the papers of Μ. Müller and F. Liebrecht cited below; we can indicate but one example in the prominent episode of Sakya’s youth, his education in a secluded palace, his encounter successively with a decrepit old man, with a man in mortal disease and poverty, with a dead body, and, lastly, with a religious recluse radiant with peace and dignity, and his consequent abandonment of his princely state for the ascetic life in the jungle. Some of the correspondences in the two stories are most minute, and Prof. Müller has pointed out that even the phraseology, in which some of the details of Josaphat’s history are described, almost literally renders the Sanskrit of the Lalita Vistara.
We have given but the skeleton of the history of Barlaam and Josaphat. It is filled out with episodes and apologues, several of which also have been traced to Buddhist sources. These stories no doubt promoted the vast mediaeval popularity of the legend in both the Greek and the Latin Churches. Its first favour in the former seems to have been due to its embodiment in the Lives of the Saints, as compiled anew by Simeon the Metaphrast, a person of disputed age, but not of later date than 1150 a.d. Selections from his work, in which this legend takes the lead, continue to be issued in Romaic as works of popular edification.
At what time the two saints first found their place in the Roman martyrology we have not been able to ascertain, but their story figures at length in the Speculum Historiale of Vincent of Beauvais, and more briefly in the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine, both of the 13th century. There is a church bearing the dedication Divo Iosaphat in Palermo, and probably others in other Catholic cities.
The story continued for centuries to be one of the most popular works in Christendom. It was translated into most European tongues, including Bohemian, Polish, and Icelandic. A version in the last, executed by a Norwegian king, dates from 120-4; in the East there were versions in (at least) Arabic, Ethiopie, Armenian, and Hebrew; whilst a translation into the Tagala language of the Philippines was printed at Manilla in 1712. The story was rendered into poems and miracle plays. Moreover, its episodes and apologues.have furnished material to poets and story-writers of very diverse ages and characters, e.g., to Boccaccio, to Gow er, to the compiler of the Gesta Romanorum, to Shakespeare himself, and to the late W. Adams, author of the King's Messengers. '
The identity of the stories of Buddha and St Josaphat was recognized by the historian of Portuguese India, Diogo de Couto, as may be seen in his history (Dec. v. liv. vi. cap. 2). In modern times it was first noticed (according to Prof. If. Müller) by Μ. Laboulaye, in the Journal des Débats (21-26 July, 1859) · but it was more elaborately set forth by the learned Dr Felix Liebrecht a year later {Jahrbuch für Doman, und Engl. Litteratur, ii. p 31-1) · and was treated with his usual grace by Prof. Müller himself in his 1 Λ c -^ re on the “M1 S ratl on θf Fables” (see Contemn. Review for July 1870, pp. 588 sgq.) r < h γ > j
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