meets the Buddha safely on the further bank. In
Jataka 90 the Buddha miraculously feeds 500 disciples with a single cake
and it is expressly mentioned that, after all had been satisfied, the
remnants were so numerous that they had to be collected and disposed of.

Still all the parallels cited amount to little more than this, that
there was a vague and fluid tradition about the super man's life of
which fragments have received a consecration in literature. The
Canonical Gospels show great caution in drawing on this fund of
tradition, but a number of Buddhist legends make their appearance in
the Apocryphal Gospels and are so obviously Indian in character that
it can hardly be maintained that they were invented in Palestine or
Egypt and spread thence eastwards. Trees bend down before the young
Christ and dragons (nagas) adore him: when he goes to school to learn
the alphabet he convicts his teacher of ignorance and the good man
faints.[1127] When he enters a temple in Egypt the images prostrate
themselves before him just as they do before the young Gotama in the
temple of Kapilavastu.[1128] Mary is luminous before the birth of
Christ which takes place without pain or impurity.[1129] But the
parallel which is most curious, because the incident related is
unusual in both Indian and European literature, is the detailed
narrative in the Gospel of James, and also in the Lalita-vistara
relating how all activity of mankind and nature was suddenly
interrupted at the moment of the nativity.[1130] Winds, stars and
rivers stayed their motion and labourers stood still in the attitude
in which each was surprised. The same Gospel of James also relates
that Mary when six months old took seven steps, which must surely be
an echo of the legend which attributes the same feat to the infant
Buddha.

Several learned authors have discussed the debt of medieval Christian
legend to India. The most remarkable instance of this is the
canonization by both the Eastern and the Western Church of St. Joasaph
or Josaphat. It seems to be established that this name is merely a
corruption of Bodhisat and that the story in its Christian form goes
back to the religious romance called Barlaam and Joasaph which appears
to date from the seventh century.[1131] It contains the history of an
Indian prince who was converted by the preaching of Barlaam and became
a hermit, and it introduces some of the well-known stories of Gotama's
early life, such as the attempt