BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES (JATAKA TALES)

The famous author in Pali text reveals that this essay and the following translation were published in 1880 as a volume in Tritbner’s Oriental Series. That volume contained, further, the beginning of a much longer work, namely the translation of the socalled Jataka. This is a collection of upwards of 550 folklore tales which forms part of the Buddhist canonical scriptures. The tales are in prose, each explaining a much more ancient poem of two or more lines. The allusions in the verses cannot be understood without the explanation given in the prose. Over and above this explanation there is added to each story an episode said to be from the life of the founder of what is now called Buddhism. Something has occurred which the founder likens to an episode in the long past, when, in a former life the actors in the present episode and he himself were engaged. In this way a moral, something like those in our fables, is drawn. At the same time the immensely long evolution in the full life or lives of all men and in particular of such a superman as the founder is brought out.