PART II.

ON THE HISTORY OF THE BIRTH STORIES IN INDIA.

In the previous part of this Introduction I have attempted to point out the resemblances between certain Western tales and the Buddhist Birth Stories, to explain the reason of those resemblances, and to trace the history of the Birth Story literature in Europe. Much remains yet to be done to complete this interesting and instructive history; but the general results can already be stated with a considerable degree of certainty, and the literature in which further research will have to be made is accessible in print in the public libraries of Europe.

For the history in India of the Jātaka Book itself, and of the stories it contains, so little has been done, that one may say it has still to be written; and the authorities for further research are only to be found in manuscripts very rare in Europe, and written in languages for the most part but little known. Much of what follows is necessarily therefore very incomplete and provisional.

In some portions of the Brāhmanical literature, later than the Vedas, and probably older than Buddhism, there are found myths and legends of a character somewhat similar to a few of the Buddhist ones. But, so far as I know, no one of these has been traced either in Europe or in the Buddhist Collection.

On the other hand, there is every reason to hope that in the older portions of the Buddhist Scriptures a considerable number of the tales also included in the Jātaka Book will be found in identical or similar forms; for even in the few fragments of the Piṭakas as yet studied, several Birth Stories have already been discovered.[61] These occur in isolated passages, and, except the story of King Mahā Sudassana, have not as yet become Jātakas,--that is, no character in the story is identified with the Buddha in one or other of his supposed previous births. But one book included in the Pāli Piṭakas consists entirely of real Jātaka stories, all of which are found in our Collection.

The title of this work is CARIYĀ-PIṬAKA; and it is constructed to show when, and in what births, Gotama had acquired the Ten Great Perfections (Generosity, Goodness, Renunciation, Wisdom, Firmness, Patience, Truth, Resolution, Kindness, and Equanimity), without which he could not have become a Buddha. In striking analogy with the modern view, that true growth in moral and intellectual power is the result of the labours, not of one only, but of many successive generations; so the qualifications necessary for the making of a Buddha, like the characters of all the lesser mortals, cannot be acquired during, and do not depend upon the actions of, one life only, but are the last result of many deeds performed through a long series of consecutive lives.[62]

To each of the first two of these Ten Perfections a whole chapter of this work is devoted, giving in verse ten examples of the previous births in which the Bodisat or future Buddha had practised Generosity and Goodness respectively. The third chapter gives only fifteen examples of the lives in which he acquired the other eight of the Perfections. It looks very much as if the original plan of the unknown author had been to give ten Birth Stories for each of the Ten Perfections. And, curiously enough, the Northern Buddhists have a tradition that the celebrated teacher Aṣvagosha began to write a work giving ten Births for each of the Ten Perfections, but died when he had versified only thirty-four.[63] Now there is a Sanskrit work called JĀTAKA MĀLĀ, as yet unpublished, but of which there are several MSS. in Paris and in London, consisting of thirty-five Birth Stories in mixed prose and verse, in illustration of the Ten Perfections.[64] It would be premature to attempt to draw any conclusions from these coincidences, but the curious reader will find in a Table below a comparative view of the titles of the Jātakas comprised in the Cariyā Piṭaka and in the Jātaka Mālā.[65]

There is yet another work in the Pāli Piṭakas which constantly refers to the Jātaka theory. The BUDDHAVAŊSA, which is a history of all the Buddhas, gives an account also of the life of the Bodisat in the character he filled during the lifetime of each of twenty-four of the previous Buddhas. It is on that work that a great part of the Pāli Introduction to our Jātaka Book is based, and most of the verses in the first fifty pages of the present translation are quotations from the Buddhavaŋsa. From this source we thus have authority for twenty-four Birth Stories, corresponding to the first twenty-four of the twenty-seven previous Buddhas,[66] besides the thirty-four in illustration of the Perfections, and the other isolated ones I have mentioned.

Beyond this it is impossible yet to state what proportion of the stories in the Jātaka Book can thus be traced back to the earlier Pāli Buddhist literature; and it would be out of place to enter here upon any lengthy discussion of the difficult question as to the date of those earlier records. The provisional conclusions as to the age of the Sutta and Vinaya reached by Dr. Oldenberg in the very able introduction prefixed to his edition of the text of the Mahā Vagga, and summarized at p. xxxviii of that work, will be sufficient for our present purposes. It may be taken as so highly probable as to be almost certain, that all those Birth Stories, which are not only found in the so-called Jātaka Book itself, but are also referred to in these other parts of the Pāli Piṭakas, are at least older than the Council of Vesāli.[67]

The Council of Vesāli was held about a hundred years after Gotama’s death, to settle certain disputes as to points of discipline and practice which had arisen among the members of the Order. The exact date of Gotama’s death is uncertain;[68] and in the tradition regarding the length of the interval between that event and the Council, the ‘hundred years’ is of course a round number. But we can allow for all possibilities, and still keep within the bounds of certainty, if we fix the date of the Council of Vesāli at within thirty years of 350 B.C.

The members of the Buddhist Order of Mendicants were divided at that Council--as important for the history of Buddhism as the Council of Nice is for the history of Christianity--into two parties. One side advocated the relaxation of the rules of the Order in ten particular matters, the others adopted the stricter view. In the accounts of the matter, which we at present only possess from the successors of the stricter party (or, as they call themselves, the orthodox party), it is acknowledged that the other, the laxer side, were in the majority; and that when the older and more influential members of the Order decided in favour of the orthodox view, the others held a council of their own, called, from the numbers of those who attended it, the Great Council.

Now the oldest Ceylon Chronicle, the Dīpavaŋsa, which contains the only account as yet published of what occurred at the Great Council, says as follows:[69]--

“The monks of the Great Council turned the religion upside down; They broke up the original Scriptures, and made a new recension; A discourse put in one place they put in another; They distorted the sense and the teaching of the Five Nikāyas. Those monks--knowing not what had been spoken at length, and what concisely, What was the obvious, and what was the higher meaning-- Attached new meaning to new words, as if spoken by the Buddha, And destroyed much of the spirit by holding to the shadow of the letter. In part they cast aside the Sutta and the Vinaya so deep, And made an imitation Sutta and Vinaya, changing this to that. The Pariwāra abstract, and the Six Books of Abhidhamma; The Paṭisambhidā, the Niddesa, _and a portion of the Jātaka_-- So much they put aside, and made others in their place!”...

The animus of this description is sufficiently evident; and the Dīpavaŋsa, which cannot have been written earlier than the fourth century after the commencement of our era, is but poor evidence of the events of seven centuries before. But it is the best we have; it is acknowledged to have been based on earlier sources, and it is at least reliable evidence that, according to Ceylon tradition, a book called the Jātaka existed at the time of the Councils of Vesāli.

As the Northern Buddhists are the successors of those who held the Great Council, we may hope before long to have the account of it from the other side, either from the Sanskrit or from the Chinese.[70] Meanwhile it is important to notice that the fact of a Book of Birth Stories having existed at a very early date is confirmed, not only by such stories being found in other parts of the Pāli Piṭakas, but also by ancient monuments.

Among the most interesting and important discoveries which we owe to recent archæological researches in India must undoubtedly be reckoned those of the Buddhist carvings on the railings round the dome-shaped relic shrines of Sānchi, Amaravatī, and Bharhut. There have been there found, very boldly and clearly sculptured in deep bas-relief, figures which were at first thought to represent merely scenes in Indian life. Even so their value as records of ancient civilization would have been of incalculable value; but they have acquired further importance since it has been proved that most of them are illustrations of the sacred Birth Stories in the Buddhist Jātaka book,--are scenes, that is, from the life of Gotama in his last or previous births. This would be incontestable in many cases from the carvings themselves, but it is rendered doubly sure by the titles of Jātakas having been found inscribed over a number of those of the bas-reliefs which have been last discovered--the carvings, namely, on the railing at Bharhut.

It is not necessary to turn aside here to examine into the details of these discoveries. It is sufficient for our present inquiry into the age of the Jātaka stories that these ancient bas-reliefs afford indisputable evidence that the Birth Stories were already, at the end of the third century B.C., considered so sacred that they were chosen as the subjects to be represented round the most sacred Buddhist buildings, and that they were already popularly known under the technical name of ‘Jātakas.’ A detailed statement of all the Jātakas hitherto discovered on these Buddhist railings, and other places, will be found in one of the Tables appended to this Introduction; and it will be noticed that several of those tales translated below in this volume had thus been chosen, more than two thousand years ago, to fill places of honour round the relic shrines of the Great Teacher.

One remarkable fact apparent from that Table will be that the Birth Stories are sometimes called in the inscriptions over the bas-reliefs by names different from those given to them in the Jātaka Book in the Pāli Piṭakas. This would seem, at first sight, to show that, although the very stories as we have them must have been known at the time when the bas-reliefs were carved, yet that the present collection, in which different names are clearly given at the end of each story, did not then exist. But, on the other hand, we not only find in the Jātaka Book itself very great uncertainty as to the names,--the same stories being called in different parts of the Book by different titles,[71]--but one of these very bas-reliefs has actually inscribed over it two distinct names in full![72]

The reason for this is very plain. When a fable about a lion and a jackal was told (as in No. 157) to show the advantage of a good character, and it was necessary to choose a short title for it, it was called ’The Lion Jātaka,’ or ‘The Jackal Jātaka,’ or even ’The Good Character Jātaka’; and when a fable was told about a tortoise, to show the evil results which follow on talkativeness (as in No. 215), the fable might as well be called ‘The Chatterbox Jātaka’ as ‘The Tortoise Jātaka,’ and the fable is referred to accordingly under both those names. It must always have been difficult, if not impossible, to fix upon a short title which should at once characterize the lesson to be taught, and the personages through whose acts it was taught; and different names would thus arise, and become interchangeable. It would be wrong therefore to attach too much importance to the difference of the names on the bas-reliefs and in the Jātaka Book. And in translating the titles we need not be afraid to allow ourselves a latitude similar to that which was indulged in by the early Buddhists themselves.

There is yet further evidence confirmatory of the Dīpavaŋsa tradition. The Buddhist Scriptures are sometimes spoken of as consisting of nine different divisions, or sorts of texts (Aŋgāni), of which the seventh is ’Jātakas,’ or ‘The Jātaka Collection’ (Jātakaŋ). This division of the Sacred Books is mentioned, not only in the Dīpavaŋsa itself, and in the Sumaŋgala Vilāsinī, but also in the Aŋguttara Nikāya (one of the later works included in the Pāli Piṭakas), and in the Saddharma Puṇḍarīka (a late, but standard Sanskrit work of the Northern Buddhists).[73] It is common, therefore, to both of the two sections of the Buddhist Church; and it follows that it was probably in use before the great schism took place between them, possibly before the Council of Vesāli itself. In any case it is conclusive as to the existence of a collection of Jātakas at a very early date.

* * * * *

The text of the Jātaka Book, as now received among the Southern Buddhists, consists, as will be seen from the translation, not only of the stories, but of an elaborate commentary, containing a detailed Explanation of the verse or verses which occur in each of the stories; an Introduction to each of them, giving the occasion on which it is said to have been told; a Conclusion, explaining the connexion between the personages in the Introductory Story and the characters in the Birth Story; and finally, a long general Introduction to the whole work. It is, in fact, an edition by a later hand of the earlier stories; and though I have called it concisely the Jātaka Book, its full title is ‘The Commentary on the Jātakas.’

We do not know either the name of the author of this work, or the date when it was composed. The meagre account given at the commencement of the work itself (below, pp. 1, 2) contains all our present information on these points. Mr. Childers, who is the translator of this passage, has elsewhere ascribed the work to Buddhaghosa;[74] but I venture to think that this is, to say the least, very uncertain.

We have, in the thirty-seventh chapter of the Mahāvaŋsa,[75] a perhaps almost contemporaneous account of Buddhaghosa’s literary work; and it is there distinctly stated, that after writing in India the Atthasālinī (a commentary on the Dhammasaŋginī, the first of the Six Books of the Abhidhamma Piṭaka), he went to Ceylon (about 430 A.D.) with the express intention of translating the Siŋhalese commentaries into Pāli. There he studied under the Thera Saŋghapāli, and having proved his efficiency by his great work ‘The Path of Purity’ (Visuddhi-Magga, a compendium of all Buddhism), he was allowed by the monks in Ceylon to carry out his wish, and translate the commentaries. The Chronicle then goes on to say that he did render ‘the whole Siŋhalese Commentary’ into Pāli. But it by no means follows, as has been too generally supposed, that he was the author of all the Pāli Commentaries we now possess. He translated, it may be granted, the Commentaries on the Vinaya Piṭaka and on the four great divisions (Nikāyas) of the Sutta Pitaka; but these works, together with those mentioned above, would amply justify the very general expression of the chronicler. The ‘Siŋhalese Commentary’ being now lost, it is impossible to say what books were and what were not included under that expression as used in the Mahāvaŋsa; and to assign any Pāli commentary, other than those just mentioned, to Buddhaghosa, some further evidence more clear than the ambiguous words of the Ceylon Chronicle should be required.

What little evidence we have as regards the particular work now in question seems to me to tend very strongly in the other direction. Buddhaghosa could scarcely have commenced his labours on the Jātaka Commentary, leaving the works I have mentioned--so much more important from his point of view--undone. Now I would ask the reader to imagine himself in Buddhaghosa’s position, and then to read carefully the opening words of our Jātaka Commentary as translated below, and to judge for himself whether they could possibly be such words as Buddhaghosa would probably, under the circumstances, have written. It is a matter of feeling; but I confess I cannot think it possible that he was the author of them. Three Elders of the Buddhist Order are there mentioned with respect, but neither the name of Revata, Buddhaghosa’s teacher in India, nor the name of Saŋghāpali, his teacher in Ceylon, is even referred to; and there is not the slightest allusion either to Buddhaghosa’s conversion, his journey from India, the high hopes he had entertained, or the work he had already accomplished! This silence seems to me almost as convincing as such negative evidence can possibly be.

If not however by Buddhaghosa, the work must have been composed after his time; but probably not long after. It is quite clear from the account in the Mahāvaŋsa, that before he came to Ceylon the Siŋhalese commentaries had not been turned into Pāli; and on the other hand, the example he had set so well will almost certainly have been quickly followed. We know one instance at least, that of the Mahāvaŋsa itself, which would confirm this supposition; and had the present work been much later than his time, it would not have been ascribed to Buddhaghosa at all.

It is worthy of notice, perhaps, in this connexion, that the Pāli work is not a translation of the Siŋhalese Commentary. The author three times refers to a previous Jātaka Commentary, which possibly formed part of the Siŋhalese work, as a separate book;[76] and in one case mentions what it says only to overrule it.[77] Our Pāli work may have been based upon it, but cannot be said to be a mere version of it. And the present Commentary agrees almost word for word, from p. 58 to p. 124 of my translation, with the MADHURA-ATTHA-VILĀSINĪ, the Commentary on the ‘Buddhavaŋsa’ mentioned above, which is not usually ascribed to Buddhaghosa.[78]

The Jātaka Book is not the only Pāli Commentary which has made use of the ancient Birth Stories. They occur in numerous passages of the different exegetical works composed in Ceylon, and the only commentary of which anything is known in print, that on the Dhamma-padaŋ or ‘Collection of Scripture Verses,’ contains a considerable number of them. Mr. Fausböll has published copious extracts from this Commentary, which may be by Buddhaghosa, as an appendix to his edition of the text; and the work by Captain Rogers, entitled ‘Buddhaghosa’s Parables’--a translation from a Burmese book called ‘Dhammapada-vatthu’ (that is ’Stories connected with the Dhamma-padaŋ’)--consists almost entirely of Jātaka tales.

In Siam there is even a rival collection of Birth Stories, which is called PAṆṆĀSA-JĀTAKAŊ (’The Fifty Jātakas’), and of which an account has been given us by M. Léon Feer;[79] and the same scholar has pointed out that isolated stories, not contained in our collection, are also to be found in the Pāli literature of that country.[80] The first hundred and fifty tales in our collection are divided into three _Paṇṇāsas_, or fifties;[81] but the Siamese collection cannot be either of these, as M. Feer has ascertained that it contains no tales beginning in the same way as any of those in either of these three ‘Fifties.’

In India itself the Birth Stories survived the fall, as some of them had probably preceded the rise, of Buddhism. Not a few of them were preserved by being included in the Mahā Bhārata, the great Hindu epic which became the storehouse of Indian mythology, philosophy, and folk-lore.[82] Unfortunately, the date of the final arrangement of the Mahā Bhārata, is extremely uncertain, and there is no further evidence of the continued existence of the Jātaka tales till we come to the time of the work already frequently referred to--the Pancha Tantra.

It is to the history of this book that Professor Benfey has devoted that elaborate and learned Introduction which is the most important contribution to the study of this class of literature as yet published; and I cannot do better than give in his own words his final conclusions as to the origin of this popular storybook:[83]--

“Although we are unable at present to give any certain information either as to the author or as to the date of the work, we receive, as it seems to me, no unimportant compensation in the fact, that it turned out,[84] with a certainty beyond doubt, to have been originally a Buddhist book. This followed especially from the chapter discussed in § 225. But it was already indicated by the considerable number of the fables and tales contained in the work, which could also be traced in Buddhist writings. Their number, and also the relation between the form in which they are told in our work, and that in which they appear in the Buddhist writings, incline us--nay, drive us--to the conclusion that the latter were the source from which our work, within the circle of Buddhist literature, proceeded....

“The proof that our work is of Buddhist origin is of importance in two ways: firstly--on which we will not here further insist--for the history of the work itself; and secondly, for the determination of what Buddhism is. We can find in it one more proof of that literary activity of Buddhism, to which, in my articles on ‘India,’ which appeared in 1840,[85] I had already felt myself compelled to assign the most important place in the enlightenment and general intellectual development of India. This view has since received, from year to year, fresh confirmations, which I hope to bring together in another place; and whereby I hope to prove that the very bloom of the intellectual life of India (whether it found expression in Brahmanical or Buddhist works) proceeded substantially from Buddhism, and is contemporaneous with the epoch in which Buddhism flourished;--that is to say, from the third century before Christ to the sixth or seventh century after Christ. With that principle, said to have been proclaimed by Buddhism in its earliest years, ‘that only _that_ teaching of the Buddha’s is true which contraveneth not sound reason,’[86] the autonomy of man’s Intellect was, we may fairly say, effectively acknowledged; the whole relation between the realms of the knowable and of the unknowable was subjected to its control; and notwithstanding that the actual reasoning powers, to which the ultimate appeal was thus given, were in fact then not altogether sound, yet the way was pointed out by which Reason could, under more favourable circumstances, begin to liberate itself from its failings. We are already learning to value, in the philosophical endeavours of Buddhism, the labours, sometimes indeed quaint, but aiming at thoroughness and worthy of the highest respect, of its severe earnestness in inquiry. And that, side by side with this, the merry jests of light, and even frivolous poetry and conversation, preserved the cheerfulness of life, is clear from the prevailing tone of our work, and still more so from the probable Buddhist origin of those other Indian story-books which have hitherto become known to us.”

Professor Benfey then proceeds to show that the Pancha Tantra consisted originally, not of five, but of certainly eleven, perhaps of twelve, and just possibly of thirteen books; and that its original design was to teach princes right government and conduct.[87] The whole collection had then a different title descriptive of this design; and it was only after a part became detached from the rest that that part was called, for distinction’s sake, the Pancha Tantra, or Five Books. When this occurred it is impossible to say. But it was certainly the older and larger collection, not the present Pancha Tantra, which travelled into Persia, and became the source of the whole of the extensive ‘Kalilag and Damnag’ literature.[88]

The Arabian authors of the work translated (through the ancient Persian) from this older collection assign it to a certain Bidpai; who is said to have composed it in order to instruct Dabschelim, the successor of Alexander in his Indian possessions, in worldly wisdom.[89] There may well be some truth in this tradition. And when we consider that the ‘Barlaam and Josaphat’ literature took its origin at the same time, and in the same place, as the ’Kalilag and Damnag’ literature; that both of them are based upon Buddhist originals taken to Bagdad in the sixth century of our era; and that it is precisely such a book as the Book of Birth Stories from which they could have derived all that they borrowed; it is difficult to avoid connecting these facts together by the supposition that the work ascribed to Bidpai may, in fact, have been a selection of those Jātaka stories bearing more especially on the conduct of life, and preceded, like our own collection, by a sketch of the life of the Buddha in his last birth. Such a supposition would afford a reasonable explanation of some curious facts which have been quite inexplicable on the existing theory. If the Arabic ‘Kalilah and Dimnah’ was an exact translation, in our modern sense of the word translation, of an exact translation of a Buddhist work, how comes it that the various copies of the ‘Kalilah and Dimnah’ differ so greatly, not only among themselves, but from the lately discovered Syriac ‘Kalilag and Damnag,’ which was also, according to the current hypothesis, a translation of the same original?--how comes it that in these translations from a Buddhist book there are no references to the Buddha, and no expressions on the face of them Buddhistic? If, on the other hand, the later writers had merely derived their subject-matter from a Buddhist work or works, and had composed what were in effect fresh works on the basis of such an original as has been suggested, we can understand how the different writers might have used different portions of the material before them, and might have discarded any expressions too directly in contradiction with their own religious beliefs.

The first three of those five chapters of the work ascribed to Bidpai which make up the Pancha Tantra, are also found in a form slightly different, but, on the whole, essentially the same, in two other Indian Story-books,--the KATHĀ-SARIT-SĀGARA (Ocean of the Rivers of Stories), composed in Sanskrit by a Northern Buddhist named _Somadeva_ in the twelfth century, and in the well-known HITOPADESA, which is a much later work. If Somadeva had had the Pancha Tantra in its present form before him, he would probably have included the whole five books in his encyclopædic collection; and the absence from the Kathā-Sarit-Sāgara of the last two books would tend to show that when he wrote his great work the Pancha Tantra had not been composed, or at least had not reached the North of India.

Somadeva derived his knowledge of the three books he does give from the VṚIHAT-KATHĀ, a work ascribed to Guṇādhya, written in the Paiṣāchī dialect, and probably at least as early as the sixth century.[90] This work, on which Somadeva’s whole poem is based, is lost. But Dr. Bühler has lately discovered another Sanskrit poem, based on that earlier work, written in Kashmīr by Kshemendra at the end of the eleventh century, and called, like its original, Vṛihat-Kathā; and as Somadeva wrote quite independently of this earlier poem, we may hope that a comparison of the two Sanskrit works will afford reliable evidence of the contents of the Old Vṛihat-Kathā.[91]

I should also mention here that another well-known work, the VETĀLA-PAÑCA-VIṄSATĪ (the Twenty-five Tales of a Demon), is contained in both the Sanskrit poems, and was therefore probably also in Guṇādhya’s collection; but as no Jātaka stories have been as yet traced in it, I have simply included it for purposes of reference in Table I., together with the most important of those of the later Indian story-books of which anything certain is at present known.

* * * * *

There remains only to add a few words on the mode in which the stories, whose history in Europe and in India I have above attempted to trace, are presented to us in the Jātaka Book.

Each story is introduced by another explaining where and why it was told by the Buddha; the Birth Story itself being called the _Atīta-vatthu_ or Story of the Past, and the Introductory Story the _Paccuppanna-vatthu_ or Story of the Present. There is another book in the Pāli Piṭakas called APADĀNAŊ, which consists of tales about the lives of the early Buddhists; and many of the Introductory Stories in the Jātaka Book (such, for instance, as the tale about Little Roadling, No. 4, or the tale about Kumāra Kassapa, No. 12) differ very little from these Apadānas. Other of the Introductory Stories (such, for instance, as No. 17 below) seem to be mere repetitions of the principal idea of the story they introduce, and are probably derived from it. That the Introductory Stories are entirely devoid of credit is clear from the fact that different Birth Stories are introduced as having been told at the same time and place, and in answer to the same question. Thus no less than ten stories are each said to have been told to a certain love-sick monk as a warning to him against his folly;[92] the closely-allied story given below as the Introduction to Birth Story No. 30 appears also as the Introduction to at least four others;[93] and there are many other instances of a similar kind.[94]

After the two stories have been told, there comes a Conclusion, in which the Buddha identifies the personages in the Birth Story with those in the Introductory Story; but it should be noticed that in one or two cases characters mentioned in the Atīta-vatthu are supposed not to have been reborn on earth at the time of the Paccuppanna-vatthu.[95] And the reader must of course avoid the mistake of importing Christian ideas into this Conclusion by supposing that the identity of the persons in the two stories is owing to the passage of a ‘soul’ from the one to the other. Buddhism does not teach the Transmigration of Souls. Its doctrine (which is somewhat intricate, and for a fuller statement of which I must refer to my Manual of Buddhism[96]) would be better summarized as the Transmigration of Character; for it is entirely independent of the early and widely-prevalent notion of the existence within each human body of a distinct soul, or ghost, or spirit. The Bodisat, for instance, is not supposed to have a Soul, which, on the death of one body, is transferred to another; but to be the inheritor of the Character acquired by the previous Bodisats. The insight and goodness, the moral and intellectual perfection which constitute Buddhahood, could not, according to the Buddhist theory, be acquired in one lifetime: they were the accumulated result of the continual effort of many generations of successive Bodisats. The only thing which continues to exist when a man dies is his _Karma_, the result of his words and thoughts and deeds (literally his ‘doing’); and the curious theory that this result is concentrated in some new individual is due to the older theory of soul.

In the case of one Jātaka (Fausböll, No. 276), the Conclusion is wholly in verse; and in several cases the Conclusion contains a verse or verses added by way of moral. Such verses, when they occur, are called _Abhisambuddha-gāthā_, or Verses spoken by the Buddha, not when he was still only a Bodisat, but when he had become a Buddha. They are so called to distinguish them from the similar verses inserted in the Birth Story, and spoken there by the Bodisat. Each story has its verse or verses, either in the _Atīta-vatthu_ or in the Conclusion, and sometimes in both. The number of cases in which all the verses are _Abhisambuddha-gāthā_ is relatively small (being only one in ten of the Jātakas published[97]); and the number of cases in which they occur together with verses in the _Atīta-vatthu_ is very small indeed (being only five out of the three hundred Jātakas published[98]); in the remaining two hundred and sixty-five the verse or verses occur in the course of the Birth Story, and are most generally spoken by the Bodisat himself.

There are several reasons for supposing that these verses are older than the prose which now forms their setting. The Ceylon tradition goes so far as to say that the original Jātaka Book, now no longer extant, consisted of the verses alone; that the Birth Stories are Commentary upon them; and the Introductory Stories, the Conclusions and the ‘_Pada-gata-sannaya_,’ or word-for-word explanation of the verses, are Commentary on this Commentary.[99] And archaic forms and forced constructions in the verses (in striking contrast with the regularity and simplicity of the prose parts of the book), and the corrupt state in which some of the verses are found, seem to point to the conclusion that the verses are older.

But I venture to think that, though the present form of the verses may be older than the present form of the Birth Stories, the latter, or most of the latter, were in existence first; that the verses, at least in many cases, were added to the stories, after they had become current; and that the Birth Stories without verses in them at all--those enumerated in the list in note 1 on the last page, where the verses are found only in the Conclusion--are, in fact, among the oldest, if not the oldest, in the whole collection. For any one who takes the trouble to go through that list seriatim will find that it contains a considerable number of those stories which, from their being found also in the Pāli Piṭakas or in the oldest European collections, can already be proved to belong to a very early date. The only hypothesis which will reconcile these facts seems to me to be that the Birth Stories, though probably originally older than the verses they contain, were handed down in Ceylon till the time of the compilation of our present Jātaka Book, in the Siŋhalese language; whilst the verses on the other hand were not translated, but were preserved as they were received, in Pāli.

There is another group of stories which seems to be older than most of the others; those, namely, in which the Bodisat appears as a sort of chorus, a moralizer only, and not an actor in the play, whose part may have been an addition made when the story in which it occurs was adopted by the Buddhists. Such is the fable above translated of the Ass in the Lion’s Skin, and most of the stories where the Bodisat is a _rukkha-devatā_--the fairy or genius of a tree.[100] But the materials are insufficient at present to put this forward as otherwise than a mere conjecture.

The arrangement of the stories in our present collection is a most unpractical one. They are classified, not according to their contents, but according to the number of verses they contain. Thus, the First division (Nipāta) includes those one hundred and fifty of the stories which have only one verse; the Second, one hundred stories, each having two verses; the Third and Fourth, each of them fifty stories, containing respectively three and four verses each; and so on, the number of stories in each division decreasing rapidly after the number of verses exceeds four; and the whole of the five hundred and fifty Jātakas being contained in twenty-two Nipātas. Even this division, depending on so unimportant a factor as the number of the verses, is not logically carried out; and the round numbers of the stories in the first four divisions are made up by including in them stories which, according to the principle adopted, should not properly be placed within them. Thus several Jātakas are only mentioned in the first two Nipātas to say that they will be found in the later ones;[101] and several Jātakas given with one verse only in the First Nipāta, are given again with more verses in those that follow;[102] and occasionally a story is even repeated, with but little variation, in the same Nipāta.[103]

On the other hand, several Jātakas, which count only as one story in the present enumeration, really contain several different tales or fables. Thus, for instance, the Kulāvaka Jātaka (On Mercy to Animals)[104] consists of seven stories woven, not very closely, into one. The most striking instance of this is perhaps the Ummagga Jātaka, not yet published in the Pāli, but of which the Siŋhalese translation by the learned Baṭuwan Tudāwa occupies two hundred and fifty pages octavo, and consists of a very large number (I have not counted them, and there is no index, but I should think they amount to more than one hundred and fifty) of most entertaining anecdotes. Although therefore the Birth Stories are spoken of as ‘The five hundred and fifty Jātakas,’ this is merely a round number reached by an entirely artificial arrangement, and gives no clue to the actual number of stories. It is probable that our present collection contains altogether (including the Introductory Stories where they are not mere repetitions) between two and three thousand independent tales, fables, anecdotes, and riddles.

Nor is the number 550 any more exact (though the discrepancy in this case is not so great) if it be supposed to record, not the number of stories, but the number of distinct births of the Bodisat. In the Kulāvaka Jātaka, just referred to (the tale On Mercy to Animals), there are two consecutive births of the future Buddha; and on the other hand, none of the six Jātakas mentioned in note 1, p. lxxx, represents a distinct birth at all--the Bodisat is in them the same person as he is in the later Jātakas in which those six are contained.

* * * * *

From the facts as they stand it seems at present to be the most probable explanation of the rise of our Jātaka Book to suppose that it was due to the religious faith of the Indian Buddhists of the third or fourth century B.C., who not only repeated a number of fables, parables, and stories ascribed to the Buddha, but gave them a peculiar sacredness and a special religious significance by identifying the best character in each with the Buddha himself in some previous birth. From the time when this step was taken, what had been merely parables or fables became ‘Jātakas,’ a word invented to distinguish, and used only of, those stories which have been thus sanctified. The earliest use of that word at present known is in the inscriptions on the Buddhist Tope at Bhārhut; and from the way in which it is there used it is clear that the word must have then been already in use for some considerable time. But when stories thus made sacred were popularly accepted among people so accustomed to literary activity as the early Buddhists, the natural consequence would be that the Jātakas should have been brought together into a collection of some kind; and the probability of this having been done at a very early date is confirmed, firstly, by the tradition of the difference of opinion concerning a Jātaka Book at the Councils of Vesāli; and secondly by the mention of a Jātaka Book in the ninefold division of the Scriptures found in the Aŋguttara Nikāya and in the Saddharma Puṇḍarīka. To the compiler of this, or of some early collection, are probably to be ascribed the Verses, which in some cases at least are later than the Stories.

With regard to some of the Jātakas, among which may certainly be included those found in the Pāli Piṭakas, there may well have been a tradition, more or less reliable, as to the time and the occasion at which they were supposed to have been uttered by the Buddha. These traditions will have given rise to the earliest Introductory Stories, in imitation of which the rest were afterwards invented; and these will then have been handed down as commentary on the Birth Stories, till they were finally made part of our present collection by its compiler in Ceylon. That (either through their later origin, or their having been much more modified in transmission) they represent a more modern point of view than the Birth Stories themselves, will be patent to every reader. There is a freshness and simplicity about the ’Stories of the Past’ that is sadly wanting in the ‘Stories of the Present’; so much so, that the latter (and this is also true of the whole long Introduction containing the life of the Buddha) may be compared more accurately with mediæval Legends of the Saints than with such simple stories as Æsop’s Fables, which still bear a likeness to their forefathers, the ‘Stories of the Past.’

The Jātakas so constituted were carried to Ceylon in the Pāli language, when Buddhism was first introduced into that island (a date that is not quite certain, but may be taken provisionally as about 200 B.C.); and the whole was there translated into and preserved in the Siŋhalese language (except the verses, which were left untranslated) until the compilation in the fifth century A.D., and by an unknown author, of the Pāli Jātaka Book, the translation of which into English is commenced in this volume.

When we consider the number of elaborate similes by which the arguments in the Pāli Suttas are enforced, there can be no reasonable doubt that the Buddha was really accustomed to teach much by the aid of parables, and it is not improbable that the compiler was quite correct in attributing to him that subtle sense of good-natured humour which led to his inventing, as occasion arose, some fable or some tale of a previous birth, to explain away existing failures in conduct among the monks, or to draw a moral from contemporaneous events. It is even already possible to point to some of the Jātakas as being probably the oldest in the collection; but it must be left to future research to carry out in ampler detail the investigation into the comparative date of each of the stories, both those which are called ‘Stories of the Past’ and those which are called ‘Stories of the Present.’

Besides the points which the teaching of the Jātakas has in common with that of European moralists and satirists, it inculcates two lessons peculiar to itself--firstly, the powerful influence of inherited character; and secondly, the essential likeness between man and other animals. The former of these two ideas underlies both the central Buddhist doctrine of Karma and the theory of the Buddhas, views certainly common among all the early Buddhists, and therefore probably held by Gotama himself. And the latter of the two underlies and explains the sympathy with animals so conspicuous in these tales, and the frequency with which they lay stress upon the duty of kindness, and even of courtesy, to the brute creation. It is curious to find in these records of a strange and ancient faith such blind feeling after, such vague foreshadowing of beliefs only now beginning to be put forward here in the West; but it is scarcely necessary to point out that the paramount value to us now of the Jātaka stories is historical.

In this respect their value does not consist only in the evidence they afford of the intercommunion between East and West, but also, and perhaps chiefly, in the assistance which they will render to the study of folk-lore;--that is, of the beliefs and habits of men in the earlier stages of their development. The researches of Tylor and Waitz and Peschel and Lubbock and Spencer have shown us that it is by this means that it is most easily possible rightly to understand and estimate many of the habits and beliefs still current among ourselves. But the chief obstacle to a consensus of opinion in such studies is the insufficiency and inaccuracy of the authorities on which the facts depend. While the ancient literature of peoples more advanced usually ignores or passes lightly over the very details most important from this point of view, the accounts of modern travellers among the so-called savage tribes are often at best very secondary evidence. It constantly happens that such a traveller can only tell us the impression conveyed to his mind of that which his informant holds to be the belief or custom of the tribe. Such native information may be inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading; and it reaches us only after filtration through a European mind more or less able to comprehend it rightly.

But in the Jātakas we have a nearly complete picture, and quite uncorrupted and unadulterated by European intercourse, of the social life and customs and popular beliefs of the common people of Aryan tribes closely related to ourselves, just as they were passing through the first stages of civilization.

The popularity of the Jātakas as amusing stories may pass away. How can it stand against the rival claims of the fairy tales of science, and the entrancing, manysided story of man’s gradual rise and progress? But though these less fabulous and more attractive stories shall increasingly engage the attention of ourselves and of our children, we may still turn with appreciation to the ancient Book of the Buddhist Jātaka Tales as a priceless record of the childhood of our race.

* * * * *

I avail myself of this opportunity of acknowledging my indebtedness to several friends whose assistance has been too continuous to be specified on any particular page. Professor Childers, whose premature death was so great a blow to Pāli studies, and whose name I never think of without a feeling of reverent and grateful regret, had undertaken the translation of the Jātakas, and the first thirty-three pages are from his pen. They are the last memento of his earnest work: they stand exactly as he left them. Professor Estlin Carpenter, who takes a deep interest in this and cognate subjects, has been kind enough to read through all the proofs, and I owe to his varied scholarship many useful hints. And my especial thanks, and the thanks of any readers this work may meet with, are above all due to Professor Fausböll, without whose _editio princeps_ of the Pāli text, the result of self-denying labours spread over many years, this translation would not have been undertaken.

T. W. RHYS DAVIDS.

TABLES ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE HISTORY AND MIGRATIONS OF THE BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES.

TABLE I.

INDIAN WORKS.

1. The JĀTAKA ATTHAVAṆṆANĀ. A collection, probably first made in the third or fourth century B.C., of stories previously existing, and ascribed to the Buddha, and put into its present form in Ceylon, in the fifth century A.D. The Pāli text is being edited by Professor Fausböll, of Copenhagen; vol. i. 1877, vol. ii. 1878, iii. in the press. English translation in the present work.

1_a._ Siŋhalese translation of No. 1, called PAN SIYA PANAS JĀTAKA POTA. Written in Ceylon in or about 1320 A.D.

1_b._ GUTTILA KĀWYAYA. A poetical version in Elu, or old Siŋhalese, of one of the stories in 1_a_, by _Badawœttœ̅wa Unnānse_, about 1415. Edited in Colombo, 1870, with introduction and commentary, by _Baṭuwan Tuḍāwa_.

1_c_. KUSA JĀTAKAYA. A poetical version in Elu, or old Siŋhalese, of one of the stories in 1_a_, by _Alagiawanna Mohoṭṭāle_, 1610. Edited in Colombo, with commentary, 1868.

1_d_. _An Eastern Love Story_. Translation in verse of 1_c_, by _Thomas Steele, C.C.S._, London, 1871.

1_e_. ASADISA JĀTAKAYA. An Elu poem, by _Rājādhirāja Siṅha_, king of Ceylon in 1780.

2. The CARIYĀ PIṬAKA. A book of the Buddhist Scriptures of the fourth century B.C., containing thirty-five of the oldest above stories. See Table IV.

3. The JĀTAKA MĀLĀ. A Sanskrit work of unknown date, also containing thirty-five of the oldest stories in No. 1. See Table IV.

4. The PAṆṆĀSA-JĀTAKAŊ or ‘50 Jātakas.’ A Pāli work written in Siam, of unknown date and contents, but apparently distinct from No. 1. See above, p. lxvii.

5. PANCHA TANTRA. ? Mediæval. See above, pp. lxviii-lxxii. Text edited by _Kosegarten_, Bonn, 1848. _Kielhorn_ and _Bühler_, Bombay, 1868.

6. Translations:--German, by _Benfey_, Leipzig, 1859.

7. French by _Dubois_, Paris, 1826.

8. French by _Lancerau_, Paris, 1871.

9. Greek by _Galanos_ and _Typaldos_, Athens, 1851.

10. HITOPADESA. Mediæval. Compiled principally from No. 2, with additions from another unknown work.

Text edited by _Carey_ and _Colebrooke_, Serampur, 1804. _Hamilton_, London, 1810. _Bernstein_, Breslau, 1823. _Schlegel_ and _Lassen_, Bonn, 1829-1831. _Nyālankar_, Calcutta, 1830 and 1844. _Johnson_, Hertford, 1847 and 1864, with English version. _Yates_, Calcutta, 1841. _E. Arnold_, Bombay, 1859 ” _Max Müller_, London, 1864-1868 ”

11. Translations:--English, by _Wilkins_, Bath, 1787; reprinted by Nyālankar in his edition of the text.

12. English, by _Sir W. Jones_, Calcutta, 1816.

12_a_. English, by _E. Arnold_, London, 1861.

13. German, by _Max Müller_, Leipzig, 1844.

13_a_. German, by _Dursch_, Tübingen, 1853.

14. German, by _L. Fritze_, Breslau, 1874.

15. French, by _Langlés_, Paris, 1790.

16. French, by _Lancerau_, Paris, 1855.

17. Greek, by _Galanos_ and _Typaldos_, Athens, 1851.

18. VETĀLA PAÑCA VIŊṢATI. Twenty-five stories told by a Vetāla, or demon. Sanskrit text in No. 32, vol. ii. pp. 288-293.

18_a_. Greek version of No. 18 added to No. 17.

19. VETHĀLA KATHEI. Tamil Version of No. 18. Edited by _Robertson_ in ’A Compilation of Papers in the Tamil Language,’ Madras, 1839.

20. No. 19, translated into English by _Babington_, in ‘Miscellaneous Translations from Oriental Languages,’ London, 1831.

21. No. 18, translated into Brajbakha, by _Surāt_, 1740.

22. BYTAL PACHISI. Translated from No. 21 into English by _Rāja Kāli Krishṇa Bahadur_, Calcutta, 1834. See No. 41_a_.

22_a_. BAITAL PACHISI. Hindustani version of No. 21, Calcutta, 1805. Edited by _Barker_, Hertford, 1855.

22_b_. English versions of 22_a_, by _J. T. Platts_, _Hollings_, and _Barker_.

22_c_. VIKRAM AND THE VAMPIRE, or Tales of Hindu Devilry. Adopted from 22_b_ by _Richard F. Burton_, London, 1870.

22_d_. German version of 22_a_, by _H. Oesterley_, in the ‘Bibliothek Orientalischer Märchen und Erzählungen,’ 1873, with valuable introduction and notes.

23. SSIDDI KÜR. Mongolian version of No. 18.

24. German versions of No. 23, by _Benjamin Bergmann_ in _Nomadische Streifereien im Lande der Kalmücken_, i. 247 and foll., 1804; and by _Juelg_, 1866 and 1868.

25. German version of No. 18, by _Dr. Luber_, Görz, 1875.

26. ṢUKA SAPTATI. The seventy stories of a parrot.

27. Greek version of No. 26, by _Demetrios Galanos_ and _G. K. Typaldos_, _Psittakou Mythologiai Nukterinai_, included in their version of Nos. 10 and 18.

28. Persian version of No. 26, now lost; but reproduced by _Nachshebi_ under the title Tuti Nāmeh.

28_a_. TOTA KAHANI. Hindustāni version of 26. Edited by _Forbes_.

28_b_. English version of 28_a_, by the _Rev. G. Small_.

29. SIṄHĀSANA DVĀTRIṄṢATI. The thirty-two stories of the throne of Vikramāditya; called also _Vikrama Caritra_. Edited in Madras, 1861.

29_a_. SINGHASAN BATTISI. Hindī version of 29. Edited by _Syed Abdoolah_.

30. VATRIṢ SINGHĀSAN. Bengalī version of No. 29, Serampur, 1818.

31. ARJI BORJI CHAN. Mongolian version of No. 29.

32. VṚIHAT-KATHĀ. By _Guṇādhya_, probably about the sixth century; in the Paiṣacī Prākrit. See above, p. lxxiii.

33. KATHĀ SARIT SĀGARA. The Ocean of the Rivers of Tales. It is founded on No. 32. Includes No. 18, and a part of No. 5. The Sanskrit text edited by _Brockhaus_, Leipzig, vol. i. with German translation, 1839; vol. ii. text only, 1862 and 1866. Original by _Ṣrī Somadeva Bhaṭṭa_, of Kashmīr, at the beginning of the twelfth century A.D. See above, pp. lxxii, lxxiii.

34. VṚIHAT-KATHA. A Sanskrit version of No. 34, by _Kshemendra_, of Kashmīr. Written independently of Somadeva’s work, No. 32. See above, p. lxxiii.

35. PAÑCA DAṆḌA CHATTRA PRABANDHA. Stories about King Vikramāditya’s magic umbrella. Jain Sanskrit. Text and German version by _Weber_, Berlin, 1877.

36. VĀSAVADATTA. By _Subandhu_. Possibly as old as the sixth century. Edited by _Fitz-Edward Hall_, in the _Bibliotheca Indica_, Calcutta, 1859. This and the next are romances, not story-books.

37. KĀDAMBARĪ. By _Bāṇa Bhaṭṭa_, ? seventh century. Edited in Calcutta, 1850; and again, 1872, by _Tarkavacaspati_.

38. Bengali version of No. 37, by _Tāra Shankar Tarkaratna_. Tenth edition, Calcutta, 1868.

39. DASA-KUMĀRA-CARITA. By _Daṇḍin_, ? sixth century. Edited by _Carey_, 1804; _Wilson_, 1846; and by _Bühler_, 1873.

39_a_. HINDOO TALES, founded on No. 39. By _P. W. Jacob_, London, 1873.

39_b_. UNE TÉTRADE. By _Hippolyte Fauche_, Paris, 1861-1863. Contains a translation into French of No. 39.

40. KATHĀRṆAVA, the Stream of Tales. In four Books; the first being No. 18, the second No. 29, the third and fourth miscellaneous.

41. PURUSHA-PARĪKSHĀ, the Adventures of King Hammīra. Probably of the fourteenth century. By _Vidyāpati_.

41_a_. English translation of No. 41, by _Rājā Kāli Krishna_, Serampur, 1830. See No. 22.

42. VĪRA-CARITAŊ, the Adventures of King Ṣālivāhana.

TABLE II.

THE KALILAG AND DAMNAG LITERATURE.

1. A lost Buddhist work in a language of Northern India, ascribed to Bidpai. See above, pp. lxx-lxxii.

2. Pēlvī version, 531-579 A.D. By _Barzūyē_, the Court physician of Khosru Nushírvan. See above, p. xxix.

3. KALILAG UND DAMNAG. Syrian version of No. 2. Published with German translation by _Gustav Bickell_, and Introduction by Professor _Benfey_, Leipzig, 1876. This and No. 15 preserve the best evidence of the contents of No. 2, and of its Buddhist original or originals.

4. KALILAH WĀ DIMNAH (Fables of Bidpai). Arabic version of No. 3, by _Abd-allah_, son of Almokaffa. Date about 750 A.D. Text of one recension edited by _Silvestre de Sacy_, Paris, 1816. Other recensions noticed at length in Ignazio Guidi’s ‘Studii sul testo Arabo del libro di Calila e Dimna’ (Rome, 1873).

5. KALILA AND DIMNA. English version of No. 4, by _Knatchbull_, Oxford, 1819.

6. DAS BUCH DES WEISEN. German version of No. 4, by _Wolff_, Stuttgart, 1839.

7. STEPHANITĒS KAI ICHVĒLATĒS. Greek version of No. 4, by _Simeon Seth_, about 1080 A.D. Edited by _Seb. Gottfried Starke_, Berlin, 1697 (reprinted in Athens, 1851), and by _Aurivillius_, Upsala, 1786.

8. Latin version of No. 7, by _Father Possin_, at the end of his edition of Pachymeres, Rome, 1866.

9. Persian translation of No. 4, by _Abdul Maali Nasr Allah_, 1118-1153. Exists, in MS. only, in Paris, Berlin, and Vienna.

10. ANVĀR I SUHAILI. Persian translation, through the last, of No. 4, by _Husain ben Ali el Vāiz U’l-Kāshifī_; end of the fifteenth century.

11. ANVĀR I SUHAILI, OR THE LIGHTS OF CANOPUS. English version of No. 10, by _Edward Eastwick_, Hertford, 1854.

11_a_. Another English version of No. 10, by _Arthur N. Wollaston_ (London, Allen).

12. LIVRE DES LUMIÈRES. French version of No. 10, by _David Sahid_, d’Ispahan, Paris, 1644, 8vo.

13. DEL GOVERNO DE’ REGNI. Italian version of No. 7, Ferrara, 1583; by _Giulio Nūti_. Edited by _Teza_, Bologna, 1872.

14. Hebrew version of No. 4, by _Joel_ (?), before 1250. Exists only in a single MS. in Paris, of which the first part is missing.

15. DIRECTORIUM HUMANÆ VITÆ. Latin version of No. 14, by _John of Capua_. Written 1263-1278. Printed about 1480, without date or name of place. Next to No. 3 it is the best evidence of the contents of the lost books Nos. 1 and 2.

16. German version of No. 15, also about 1480, but without date or name of place.

17. Version in Ulm dialect of No. 16. Ulm, 1483.

18. _Baldo’s_ ‘ALTER ÆSOPUS.’ A translation direct from Arabic into Latin (? thirteenth century.) Edited in _du Meril’s_ ‘Poesies inédites du moyen age,’ Paris, 1854.

19. CALILA É DYMNA. Spanish version of No. 4 (? through an unknown Latin version). About 1251. Published in ‘Biblioteca de Autores Españoles,’ Madrid, 1860, vol. 51.

20. CALILA ET DIMNA. Latin version of the last, by _Raimond de Beziers_, 1313.

21. CONDE LUCANOR. By _Don Juan Manuel_ (died 1347), grandson of St. Ferdinand of Spain. Spanish source not certain.

22. SINBAD THE SAILOR, or Book of the Seven Wise Masters. See _Comparetti_, ‘Ricerche intorno al Libro di Sindibad,’ Milano, 1869.

23. CONTES ET NOUVELLES. By _Bonaventure des Periers_, Lyons, 1587.

24. EXEMPLARIO CONTRA LOS ENGAÑOS. 1493. Spanish version of the Directorium.

25. DISCORSE DEGLI ANIMALI. Italian of last, by _Ange Firenzuola_, 1548.

26. LA FILOSOFIA MORALE. By _Doni_, 1552. Italian of last but one.

27. _North’s_ English version of last, 1570.

28. FABLES by _La Fontaine_.

First edition in vi. books, the subjects of which are mostly taken from classical authors and from Planudes’s Æsop, Paris, 1668.

Second edition in xi. books, the five later taken from Nos. 12 and 23, Paris, 1678.

Third edition in xii. books, Paris, 1694.

TABLE III.

THE BARLAAM AND JOSAPHAT SERIES.

1. _St. John of Damascus’s Greek Text._ Seventh century A.D. First edited by BOISSONADE, in his ‘Anecdota Græca,’ Paris, 1832, vol. iv. Reprinted in Migne’s ‘Patrologia Cursus Completus, Series Græca,’ tom. xcvi, pp. 836-1250, with the Latin translation by BILLY[105] in parallel columns. Boissonade’s text is reviewed, and its imperfections pointed out, by SCHUBART (who makes use of six Vienna MSS.) in the ‘Wiener Jahrbücher,’ vol. lxiii.

2. _Syriac version_ of No. 1 exists only in MS.

3. _Arabic version_ of No. 2 exists only in MS., one MS. being at least as old as the eleventh century.

4. _Latin version_ of No. 1, of unknown date and author, of which MSS. of the twelfth century are still extant. There is a black-letter edition (? Spiers, 1470) in the British Museum. It was adopted, with abbreviations in several places, by VINCENTIUS BELLOVICENSIS, in his ‘Speculum Historiale’ (lib. xv. cap. 1-63); by JACOBUS A VORAGINE, in his ‘Legenda Aurea’ (ed. _Grässe_, 1846); and was reprinted in full in the editions of the works of St. John of Damascus, published at Basel in the sixteenth century.[106] From this Latin version all the later mediæval works on this subject are either directly or indirectly derived.

4_a_. An abbreviated version in Latin of the fourteenth century in the British Museum. Arundel MS. 330, fol. 51-57. See Koch, No. 9, p. xiv.

German:--

5. _Barlaam und Josaphat._ A poem of the thirteenth century, published from a MS. in the Solms-Laubach Library by L. DIEFENBACH, under the title ‘Mittheilungen über eine noch ungedruckte m.h.d. bearbeitung des B. and J.’ Giessen, 1836.

6. Another poem, partly published from an imperfect MS. at Zürich, by FRANZ PFEIFFER, in Haupt’s ‘Zeitsch. f. d. Alterthum,’ i. 127-135.

7. _Barlaam und Josaphat._ By RUDOLF VON EMS. Written about 1230. Latest and best edition by FRANZ PFEIFFER, in ‘Dichtungen des deutschen Mittelalters,’ vol. iii., Leipzig, 1843. This popular treatment of the subject exists in numerous MSS.

7. _Die Hÿstorí Josaphat und Barlaam._ Date and author not named. Black-letter. Woodcuts. Title on last page. Fifty-six short chapters. Quaint and forcible old German. A small folio in the British Museum.

8. _Historia von dem Leben der zweien_ H. _Beichtiger Barlaam Eremiten, und Josaphat des König’s in Indien Sohn, etc._ Translated from the Latin by the Counts of HELFFENSTEIN and HOHENZOLLERN, München, 1684. In 40 long chapters, pp. 602, 12mo.

Dutch:--

9. _Het Leven en Bedryf van Barlaam den Heremit, en Josaphat Koning van Indien._ Noo in Nederduits vertaalt door F. v. H., Antwerp, 1593, 12mo.

A new edition of this version appeared in 1672. This is a long and tedious prose version of the holy legend.

French:--

8. Poem by GUI DE CAMBRAY (1200-1250). Edited by HERMANN ZOTENBERG and PAUL MEYER in the ‘Bibliothek des Literarischen Vereins,’ in Stuttgart, vol. lxxv., 1864. They mention, also (pp. 318-325):--

9. _La Vie de Seint Josaphaz._ Poem by CHARDRY. Edited by JOHN KOCH, Heilbronn, 1879, who confirms the editors of No. 8 as to the following old French versions, 10-15; and further adduces No. 11_a_.

10. A third poem by an unknown author.

11. A prose work by an unknown author--all three being of the 13th cent.

11_a_. Another in MS. Egerton, 745, British Museum.

12. A poem in French of the fifteenth century, based on the abstract in Latin of No. 4, by JACOB DE VORAGINE.

13. A Provençal tale in prose, containing only the story of Josafat and the tales told by Barlaam, without the moralizations.

14. A miracle play of about 1400.

15. Another miracle play of about 1460.

Italian:--

16. _Vita di san Giosafat convertito da Barlaam._ By GEO. ANTONIO REMONDINI. Published about 1600, at Venezia and Bassano, 16mo. There is a second edition of this, also without date; and a third, published in Modena in 1768, with illustrations.

17. _Storia de’ SS. Barlaam e Giosafatte._ By BOTTARI, Rome, 1734, 8vo., of which a second edition appeared in 1816.

18. _La santissima vita di Santo Josafat, figluolo del Re Avenero, Re dell’ India, da che ei nacque per infino ch’ei morì._ A prose romance, edited by TELESFORO BINI from a MS. belonging to the Commendatore Francesco de Rossi, in pp. 124-152 of a collection ‘Rime e Prose,’ Lucca, 1852, 8vo.

19. A prose _Vita da Santo Josafat_. In MS. Add. 10902 of the British Museum, which Paul Mayer (see No. 8) says begins exactly as No. 18, but ends differently. (See Koch, No. 9 above, p. xiii.)

20. A _Rappresentatione di Barlaam e Josafat_ is mentioned by Frederigo Palermo in his ‘I manuscritti Palatini de Firenze,’ 1860, vol. ii. p. 401.

Skandinavian:--

A full account of all the Skandinavian versions is given in _Barlaam’s ok Josaphat’s Saga_, by C. R. UNGER, Christiania, 1851, 8vo.

Spanish:--

_Honesta, etc., historia de la rara vida de los famosos y singulares sanctos Barlaam, etc._ By BALTASAT DE SANTA CRUZ. Published in the Spanish dialect used in the Philippine Islands at Manila, 1692. A literal translation of Billius (No. 1).

English:--

In HORSTMANN’S ‘Altenglische Legenden,’ Paderborn, 1875, an Old English version of the legend is published from the Bodleian MS. No. 779. There is another recension of the same poem in the Harleian MS. No. 4196. Both are of the fourteenth century; and of the second there is another copy in the Vernon MS. See further, Warton’s ‘History of English Poetry,’ i. 271-279, and ii. 30, 58, 308.

Horstmann has also published a Middle English version in the ‘Program of the Sagan Gymnasium,’ 1877.

_The History of the Five Wise Philosophers; or, the Wonderful Relation of the Life of Jehoshaphat the Hermit, Son of Avenerian, King of Barma in India, etc._ By N. H. (that is, NICHOLAS HERICK), Gent., London, 1711, pp. 128, 12mo. This is a prose romance, and an abridged translation of the Italian version of 1600 (No. 16), and contains only one fable (at p. 46) of the Nightingale and the Fowler.

The work referred to on p. xlvi, under the title _Gesta Romanorum_, a collection of tales with lengthy moralizations (probably sermons), was made in England about 1300. It soon passed to the Continent, and was repeatedly re-written in numerous MSS., with additions and alterations. Three printed editions appeared between 1472 and 1475; and one of these, containing 181 stories, is the source of the work now known under this title. Tale No. 168 quotes Barlaam. The best edition of the Latin version is by H. OESTERLEY, Berlin, 1872. The last English translation is HOOPER’S, Bohn’s Antiquarian Library, London, 1877. The Early English versions have been edited by SIR F. MADDEN; and again, in vol. xxxiii. of the Extra Series of the Early English Text Society, by S. J. H. HERRTAGE.

_The Seven Sages_ (edited by THOMAS WRIGHT for the Percy Society, 1845) also contains some Buddhist tales.

TABLE IV.

COMPARISON OF THE CARIYĀ PIṬAKA AND THE JĀTAKA MĀLĀ.

1. Akitte-cariyaŋ. Vyāghī-jātakaŋ. 2. Saŋkha-c°. Ṣivi-j° (8). 3. Danañjaya-c°. Kulmāsapiṇḍi-j°. 4. Mahā-sudassana-c°. Ṣreshthi-j° (21). 5. Mahā-govinda-c°. Avisajyaṣreshthi-j°. 6. Nimi-rāja-c°. Ṣaṣa-j° (10). 7. Canda-kumāra-c°. Agastya-j°. 8. Sivi-rāja-c° (2). Maitribala-j°. 9. Vessantara-c° (9). Viṣvantara-j° (9). 10. Sasa-paṇḍita-c° (6). Yajña-j°. 11. Sīlava-nāga-c° (J. 72). Sakra-j°. 12. Bhuridatta-c°. Brāhmaṇa-j°. 13. Campeyya-nāga-c°. Ummādayanti-j°. 14. Cūla-bodhi-c°. Suparāga-j°. 15. Māhiŋsa-rāja-c° (27). Matsya-j° (30). 16. Ruru-rāja-c°. Vartaka-potaka-j° (29). 17. Mātaŋga-c°. Kacchapa-j°. 18. Dhammādhamma-devaputta-c°. Kumbha-j°. 19. Jayadisa-c°. Putra-j°. 20. Saŋkhapāla-c°. Visa-j°. 21. Yudañjaya-c°. Ṣreshthi-j° (4). 22. Somanassa-c°. Buddhabodhi-j°. 23. Ayoghara-c° (33). Haŋsa-j°. 24. Bhisa-c°. Mahābodhi-j°. 25. Soma-paṇḍita-c° (32). Mahākapi-j° (27, 28). 26. Temiya-c°. Ṣarabha-j°. 27. Kapi-rāja-c° (25, 28). Ruru-j° (16). 28. Saccahvaya-paṇḍita-c°. Mahākapi-j° (25, 27). 29. Vaṭṭaka-potaka-c° (16). Kshānti-j°. 30. Maccha-rāja-c° (15). Brahma-j°. 31. Kaṇha-dipāyana-c°. Hasti-j°. 32. Sutasoma-c° (25, 32). Sutasoma-j° (25, 32). 33. Suvaṇṇa-sāma-c°. Ayogṛiha-j° (23). 34. Ekarāja-c°. Mahisha-j°. 35. Mahā-lomahaŋsa-c° (J. 94). Ṣatapatra-j°.

For the above lists see _Feer_, ‘Etude sur les Jatakas,’ p. 58; _Gogerly_, Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1853; and _Fausböll_, ‘Five Jātakas,’ p. 59; and also above, pp. liii,