1. Holding to the Truth . . . Apaṇnaka Jātaka 2. The Sandy Road... Vannupatha Jātaka 3. The Merchant of Sēri... Seri-vānija Jātaka 11. The Story of Beauty... Lakkhaṇa Jātaka. 12. The Banyan Deer... Nigrodha-miga Jātaka 16. The Cunning Deer . . . Tipallatha-miga Jātaka 221 ... 23. The Bhoja Thoroughbred . . . Bhojājānīya Jātaka 24. The Thoroughbred War Horse . . . Ājañña Jātaka 25. The Horse at the Ford . . . Tittha Jātaka 275 31. On Mercy to Animals . . . Kulāvaka Jātaka 278 32. The Dancing Peacock... Nacca Jātaka 291 34. The Fish and his Wife . . . Maccha Jātaka INTRODUCTION. How this came about The belief of orthodox The Buddha, as occa It is well known that amongst the Buddhist Scriptures there is one book in which a large number of old stories, fables, and fairy tales, lie enshrined in an edifying commentary; and have thus been preserved for the study and amusement of later times. is not at present quite certain. Buddhists on the subject is this. sion arose, was accustomed throughout his long career to explain and comment on the events happening around him, by telling of similar events that had occurred in his own previous births. The experience, not of one lifetime only, but of many lives, was always present to his mind; and it was this experience he so often used to point a moral, or adorn a tale. The stories so told are said to have been reverently learnt and repeated by his disciples; and immediately after his death 550 of them were gathered together in one collection, called the Book of the 550 Jatakas or Births; the commentary to which gives for each Jātaka, or Birth Story, an account of the event in Gotama's life which led to his VOL. I. b first telling that particular story. Both text and commentary were then handed down intact, and in the Pāli language in which they were composed, to the time of the Council of Patna (held in or about the year 250 B.C.); and they were carried in the following year to Ceylon by the great missionary Mahinda. There the commentary was translated into Sinhalese, the Aryan dialect spoken in Ceylon; and was re-translated into its present form in the Pali language in the fifth century of our era. But the text of the Jātaka stories themselves has been throughout preserved in its original Pāli form. Unfortunately this orthodox Buddhist belief as to the history of the Book of Birth Stories rests on a foundation of quicksand. The Buddhist belief, that most of their sacred books were in existence immediately after the Buddha's death, is not only not supported, but is contradicted by the evidence of those books themselves. It may be necessary to state what that belief is, in order to show the importance which the Buddhists attach to the book; but in order to estimate the value we ourselves should give it, it will be necessary by critical, and more roundabout methods, to endeavour to arrive at some more reliable conclusion. Such an investigation cannot, it is true, be completed until the whole series of the Buddhist Birth Stories shall have become accessible in the original Pāli text, and the history of those stories shall have been traced in other sources. With the present inadequate information at our command, it is only possible to arrive at probabilities. But it is therefore the more fortunate that the course of the inquiry will lead to some highly interesting and instructive results. In the first place, the fairy tales, parables, fables, riddles, and comic and moral stories, of which the Buddhist Collection-known as the Jataka Bookconsists, have been found, in many instances, to bear a striking resemblance to similar ones current in the West. Now in many instances this resemblance is simply due to the fact that the Western stories were | borrowed from the Buddhist ones. To this resemblance much of the interest excited by the Buddhist Birth Stories is, very naturally, due. As, therefore, the stories translated in the body of this volume do not happen to contain among them any of those most generally known in England, I insert here one or two specimens which may at the same time afford some amusement, and also enable the reader to judge how far the alleged resemblances do actually exist. It is absolutely essential for the correctness of such judgment that the stories should be presented exactly as they stand in the original. I am aware that a close and literal translation involves the disadvantage of pre |