HKB
of rice; a parable doubtless originally carrying a lesson, like Our Lord’s remark on the widow’s mite, but which hardened eventually into some foolish story like that in the text.
The modern Mussulman story at Kandahar is that the alms-pot will contain any quantity of liquor without overflowing.
This Pâtra is the Holy Grail of Buddhism. Mystical powers of nourishment are ascribed also to the Grail in the European legends. German scholars have traced in the romances of the Grail remarkable indications of Oriental origin. It is not impossible that the alms-pot of Buddha was the prime source of them. Read the prophetic history of the Pâtra as Fa-hian heard it in India (p. 161); its mysterious wanderings over Asia till it is taken up into the heaven Tushita, where Maitreya the Future Buddha dwells. When it has disappeared from earth the Law gradually perishes, and violence and wickedness more and more prevail:
——“What is it? The phantom of a cup that comes and goes? * * * * * If a man Could touch or see it, he was heal’d at once, By faith, of all his ills. But then the times Grew to such evil that the holy cup Was caught away to Heaven, and disappear’d.” —Tennyson’s Holy Grail.
[1] Apollonia (of Macedonia) is made Bolina; so Bolinas = Apollonius (Tyanaeus).
[2] In 1870 I saw in the Libary at Monte Cassino a long French poem on the story, in a MS. of our traveller’s age. This is perhaps one referred to by Migne, as cited in Hist. Litt. de la France, XV. 484. [It “has even been published in the Spanish dialect used in the Philippine Islands!” (Rhys Davids, Jataka Tales, p. xxxvii.) In a MS. note, Yule says: “Is not this a mistake?”—H. C.]
[3] Imprynted at London in Flete Strete at the sygne of the Sonne, by Wynkyn de Worde (1527).
[4] The first Life is thus entitled: Βίος καὶ Πολιτεία τοῦ Ὁσίου Πατρὸς ἡμῶν καὶ Ἰσαποστόλου Ἰωάσαφ τοῦ βασιλέως τῆς Ἰνδίας. Professor Müller says all the Greek copies have Ioasaph. I have access to no copy in the ancient Greek.
[5] Also Migne’s Dict. Légendes, quoting a letter of C. L. Struve, Director of Königsberg Gymnasium, to the Journal Général de l’Inst. Publ., says that “an earlier story is entirely reproduced in the Barlaam,” but without saying what story.
[6] The well-known Kánhari Caves. (See Handbook for India, p. 306.)
[7] The quotation and the cut are from an old German version of Barlaam and Josaphat printed by Zainer at Augsburg, circa 1477. (B. M., Grenv. Lib., No. 11,766.)
[8] Ed. 1554, fol. xci. v. So also I find in A. Tostati Hisp. Comment. in primam ptem. Exodi, Ven. 1695, pp. 295–296: “Idola autem sculpta in Aegypto primo inventa sunt per Syrophenem primum Idolotrarum; ante hoc enim pura elementa ut dii colebantur.” I cannot trace the tale.