JOSAPHAT, a corruption of Bodhisatwa. Barlaam and Josaphat, a romance ascribed to St. John of Damascus, has been so completely received into the bosom of the Latin Church, that the names of ' the holy saints Barlaam and Josaphat of India, on the borders of Persia,' have been canon ized, and have their proper day, November 27th, as may be read in the Martyrologiiim of Cardinal Baronius, authorized by i'ope Sextus v. for general use in the Catholic world, at page 177 of the 1873 edition, endorsed by His Holiness Pius ix. The Greek Church assigns a different day to the holy losaph, son of Ahener, king of India, and omits Barlaam. Josaphat or Iosaph is Bodhisat, or the condition of Sakya before he became a Buddha, and the religious romance of St. John of Damascus is simply a Greek version of the life of Gautama. Professor Max Muller pointed out the fact that Gautama, under the name of St. Josaphat, is now
officially recognised and honoured and worshipped throughout the whole of Roman Catholic Christen dom as a Christian saint! And just as Barlaam and Josaphat is an offshoot of Buddhist literature, so the wide series of tales represented by the Pancha Tantra, Kalila and Damna, Fables of Bidpai, Xsop's Fables and La Fontaine's, are mainly traceable not only to an Indian, but to a Buddhist source. Sindbad the Sailor, and other tales of the Arabian Nights, have their birth in Buddhist Jatakas ; Boccaccio, Chaucer, Gower, and Spencer have been indebted to this treasure house of Buddhist folk-lore; even the three caskets and the pound of flesh in the Merchant of Venice are ideas found in this wonderful old story-book. —Contemporary Review, 1870. Sec Barlaam ; Jataka ; Lats.