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Wilfred Cantwell Smith traced the story from a second to fourth-century Sanskrit Mahayana Buddhist text, to a Manichee version, to an Arabic Muslim version, to an eleventh century Christian Georgian version, to a Christian Greek version, and from there into Western European languages. He traced Josaphat's name from the Sanskrit term ''bodhisattva'' via the Middle Persian ''bodasif''.
==Myths and legends==
According to the 1907 Catholic Encyclopedia, the story is one of the legends of "Buddha" in which the claim is Buddha was Saint Josaphat. It is said that this is a corruption of the original Joasaph, which is again from the middle Persian Budasif (Budsaif=Bodhisattva). The Greek text of the legend, written beginning of the seventh century, probably by a monk of the Sabbas monastery near Jerusalem, was first published by Boissonade in "Anecdota Graeca" (paris, 1832), IV, and is reproduced in Migne, PG, XCVI, among the works of St. John Damascene. The legend cannot, however, have been a work of the great Damascene, as was proved by Zotenberg in "Notices sur le livre de Barlaam et Josaphat" (Paris, 1886) and by Hammel in "Verhandl. des 7 interneat. Orientalisten Congresses", Semit. Section (Vienna, 1888).
==Source==
* [[Wikipedia:Saint Josaphat]]