The modern Mussulman story at Kandahar is that the alms-pot will contain any quantity of liquor without overflowing.

This Patra 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 Patra 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:  [Greek:  Bios kai Politeia tou Hosiou
    Patros haemon kai Isapostolon Ioasaph tou Basileos taes Indias]. 
    Professor Mueller says all the Greek copies have Ioasaph.  I have
    access to no copy in the ancient Greek.

[5] Also Migne’s Dict.  Legendes, quoting a letter of C.L.  Struve,
    Director of Koenigsberg Gymnasium, to the Journal General de l’Inst. 
    Publ., says that “an earlier story is entirely reproduced in the
    Barlaam,” but without saying what story.

[6] The well-known Kanhari 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.