The introduction to the old Jataka book gives the life of the historical Buddha. That introduction must also have reached Persia by the same route. For in the 8th century St John of Damascus put the story into Greek under the title of _Barlaam and Josaphat_. This story became very popular in the West. It was translated into Latin, into seven European languages, and even into Icelandic and the dialect of the Philippine Islands. Its hero, that is the Buddha, was canonized as a Christian saint; and the 27th of November was officially fixed as the date for his adoration as such. The book popularly known in Europe as _Aesop's Fables_ was not written by Aesop. It was put together in the 14th century at Constantinople by a monk named Planudes, and he drew largely for his stories upon those in the Jataka book that had reached Europe along various channels. The fables of Babrius and Phaedrus, written respectively in the 1st century before, and in the 1st century after, the Christian era, also contain Jataka stories known in India in the 4th century B.C. A great deal has been written on this curious question of the migration of fables. But we are still very far from being able to trace the complete history of each story in the Jataka book, or in any one of the later collections. For India itself the record is most incomplete. We have the original Jataka book in text and translation. The history of the text of the Pancha tantra, about a thousand years later, has been fairly well traced out. But for the intervening centuries scarcely anything has been done. There are illustrations, in the bas-reliefs of the 3rd century B.C., of Jatakas not contained in the Jataka book. Another collection, the _Cariyâ pitaka_, of about the same date, has been edited, but not translated. Other collections both in Pali and Sanskrit are known to be extant in MS; and a large number of Jataka stories, not included in any formal collection, are mentioned, or told in full, in other works. AUTHORITIES.--V. Fausböll, _The Jataka_, Pali text (7 vols., London, 1877-1897), (Eng. trans., edited by E. B. Cowell, 6 vols., Cambridge, 1895-1907); _Cariyâ pitaka_, edited by R. Morris for the Pali Text Society (London, 1882); H. Kern, _Jataka-mala_, Sanskrit text (Cambridge, Mass., 1891), (Eng. trans. by J. S. Speyer, Oxford, 1895); Rhys Davids, _Buddhist Birth Stories_ (with full bibliographical tables) (London, 1880); _Buddhist India_ (chap. xi. on the Jataka Book) (London, 1903); E. Kuhn, _Barlaam und Joasaph_ (Munich, 1893); A. Cunningham, _The Stupa of Bharhut_ (London, 1879). (T. W. R. D.) FOOTNOTE: [1] A complete list of these inscriptions will be found in Rhys Davids's _Buddhist India_, p. 209.