Barlaam and Josaphat English Lives of Buddha, Edited and Induced (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Barlaam and Josaphat: English Lives of Buddha, Edited and Induced The fact that by its means Buddha had been, if only informally, canonised a Saint of the Church, would be enough to attract attention to it. But many of the parables enframed in the legend have had a history even more remarkable than the legend itself. As is well known, the Gaskets story of the Merchant of Venice is ultimately derived from Barlaam and Josaphat. I have for some time been making rather extensive collections for the Introduction to this work, in order to make it a companion study to my treatment of the Fables of Bidpai and Æsop in the same series. But all that I have collected, and much more also, has been put together by Dr. Ernst Kuhn in a contribution to the Abhandlungen of the Bavarian Academy of Science (Munich, 1893). This is one of those erudite bibliographical monographs in which German scholarship excels; and in all those portions of my Introduction, which deal with the bibliographical aspects of the question, and notably in the pedigree and appendices, I make grateful use of Dr. Kuhn's researches. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.