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 to hide from him the existence of sickness and old age, and his meetings with a cripple and an old man.  The legends of St. Placidus (or Hubert) and St. Christopher have also been identified with the Nigrodha and Sutasoma Jatakas.[1132] The identification is not to my mind conclusive nor, if it is admitted, of much importance.  For who doubts that Indian fables reappear in Aesop or Kalilah and Dimnah?  Little is added to this fact if they also appear in legends which may have some connection with the Church but which most Christians feel no obligation to believe.

But the occurrence of Indian legends in the Apocryphal Gospels is more important for it shows that, though in the early centuries of Christianity the Church was shy of this oriental exuberance, yet the materials were at hand for those who chose to use them.  Many wonders attending the superman’s birth were deliberately rejected but some were accepted and oriental practices, such as asceticism, appear with a suddenness that makes the suspicion of foreign influence legitimate.