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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: INV-JED |
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JATAKA , the technical name, in Buddhist literature, for a story of one or other of the previous births of the Buddha. The word is also used for the name of a collection of 547 of such stories included, by a most fortunate conjuncture of circumstances, in the Buddhist canon. This is the most ancient and the most complete collection of folk- lore
lore
Already in the oldest documents, drawn
they were so fond. The process must have been complete by the middle of the 3rd century B.c.; for we find at that date illustrations of the Jatakas in the bas-reliefs on the railing round the Bharahat tope with the titles of the Jataka stories inscribed above them in the characters of that period.' The hero of each story is made into a Bodhisatta; that is, a being who is destined, after a number of subsequent births, to become a Buddha. This rapid development of the Bodhisatta theory is the distinguishing feature in the early history of Buddhism, and was both cause and effect of the simultaneous growth of the Jataka book. In adopting the folk-lore and fables already current in India, the Buddhists did not change them very much. The stories as preserved to us, are for the most part Indian rather than Buddhist. The ethics they inculcate or suggest are milk for babes; very simple in character and referring almost exclusively to matters common to all schools of thought in India, and indeed elsewhere. Kindness, purity, honesty, generosity, worldly wisdom, perseverance, are the usual virtues praised; the higher ethics of the Path are scarcely mentioned. These stories, popular with all, were especially appreciated by that school of Buddhists that laid stress on the Bodhisatta theorya school that obtained its chief
original
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The introduction to the old Jataka book gives the life of the historical Buddha. That introduction must also have reached Persia by the same route. For in the 8th century St John of Damascus put the story into Greek under the title of Barlaam and Josaphat. This story became very popular in the West. It was translated into Latin, into seven European languages, and even into Icelandic and the dialect of the Philippine Islands. Its hero, that is the Buddha, was canonized as a Christian saint; and the 27th of November was officially fixed as the date for his adoration as such. The book popularly known in Europe as Aesop's Fables was not written by Aesop. It was put together in the 14th century at Constantinople by a monk named Planudes, and he drew largely for his stories upon those in the Jataka book that had reached Europe along various channels. The fables of Babrius and Phaedrus, written respectively in the 1st century before, and in the 1st century after, the Christian era, also contain Jataka stories known in India in the 4th century B.C. A great deal has been written on this curious question of the migration of fables. But we are still very far from being able to trace the complete history of each story in the Jataka book, or in any one of the later collections. For India itself the record is most incomplete. We have the original Jataka book in text and translation. The history of the text of the Pancha :antra, about a thousand years later, has been fairly well traced out. But for the intervening centuries scarcely anything has been done. There are illustrations, in the bas-reliefs of the 3rd century B.C., of Jatakas not contained in the Jataka book. Another collection, the Cariyd pitaka, of about the same date, has been edited, but not translated. Other collections both in Pali and Sanskrit are known to be extant in MS,; and a large number of Jataka stories, not included in any formal collection, are mentione , or told in full, in other works. A complete list
inscriptions will be found in Rhys Davids's Buddhist India, p. 209.JATS Society (London, 1882); H. Kern, Jataka-mal8, Sanskrit text (Cam-bridge, Mass., 1891), (Eng. trans. by J. S. Speyer, Oxford, 1895); Rhys Davids, Buddhist Birth
(T. W. R. D.) End of Article: JATAKA If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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