Broabwa\> {Translations
"Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety "
BUDDHIST ACADEMY
MONTREAL, CANADA
Broabwa\> translations
BUDDHIST BIRTH-STORIES
(JATAKA TALES)
The Commentarial Introduction Entitled
NIDANA-KATHA THE STORT OF THE LINEAGE
Translated from Prof. V. Fausboll'-s edition of the Pali text by
T. W. RHYS DAVIDS
New and Revised Edition by MRS RHYS DAVIDS, D.Lrrr., M.A.
LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE fcf SONS LTD.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON
CO.
^^
PRINTED IN GKEAT BRITAIN BY STEPHEN AUSTIN AND SONS, LTD., HERTFORD
TO
GEHEIM-RATH PROFESSOR DOCTOR STENZLER
MY FIEST GUIDE IN ORIENTAL STUDIES
IN CONGRATULATION ON HIS ' DOCTOR JUBILAUM '
AND IN DEEP RESPECT FOR HIS PROFOUND SCHOLARSHIP
THIS WORK IS DEDICATED BY
HIS GRATEFUL PUPIL
THE AUTHOR
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION . . i
PART I
The Book of Birth Stories, and their Migration to the West
Orthodox Buddhist belief concerning it. Two reasons for the value attached
to it . . . . . . i
Selected Stories :—
1. The Ass in the Lion's Skin . iv
2. The Talkative Tortoise . . viii
3. The Jackal and the Crow . . xi
4. The Birth as " Great Physician "' xiii
5. Sakka's Presents ... xv
6. A Lesson for Kings . . . xxi The Kalilag and Damnag Literature . xxvii Origin of '^Esop's ' Fables . . . xxix The Barlaam and Josaphat Literature . xxxiii Other Migrations of the Buddhist Tales xxxix Greek and Buddhist Fables . . xl Solomon's Judgment .... xlii Summary of Part I .... xlv
vi TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART II The Birth Stories in India
PAGE
Jatakas derived from the Pali Pitakas . xlvii „ in the Cariya Pitaka and Jataka
Mala . . . xlviii
,, in the Buddhavamsa
at the Council of Vesall . li
on the Ancient Sculptures . liv
The Pali Names of the Jatakas . lv
The Jatakas one of the Navangani Ivi
Authorship of our present Collection . Ivii Jatakas not included in our present
Collection . . Ixi Jatakas in post-Buddhistic Sanskrit
Literature . . Ixii
Form of the Jatakas : —
The Introductory Stories Ixvii
The Conclusions . . Ixviii
The Abhisambuddha - gatha, or
Verses in the Conclusion Ixx
Divisions of the Jataka Book Ixxii
Actual Number of the Stories Ixxii
Summary of the Origin of the Present
Collection . • Ixxiv
Special Lessons inculcated by the Birth
Stories . - lxxvii
Special Historical Value of the Birth
Stories . - -
TABLE OF CONTENTS vii
THE CEYLON COMPILER'S INTRODUCTION, called the Niddna-Kathd
PAGE
Story of Sumedha, the First Bodisat . 82
The Successive Bodisats in the Times 01
the Previous Buddhas . . . 115
Life of the Last Bodisat (who became
Buddha) . . 144
His Descent from Tusita . . . 145
His Birth ... 154
Song of the Devas .... 156
Prophecy of Kala Devala . . 157
Prophecy of the Brahmin Priests . . 161
The Ploughing Festival . . . 163
The Young Bodisat's Skill and Wisdom 165
The Four Visions . . . . 166
The Bodisat's Son is Born ... 168
Kisa Gotami's Song . . . . 169
The Great Renunciation ... 172
The Great Struggle against Sin . . 181
The Great Victory over Mara . . 190
The Bliss of Nirvana . . . . 199 The Hesitation whether to Publish the
Good News . 206 The Foundation of the Kingdom of
Righteousness . . . . 209
Uruvela Kassapa's Conversion . . 210
Triumphal Entrance into Rajagaha . 212
Foundation of the Order 214
viii TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Return Home ..... 217
Presentation of the First Monastery to
the Buddha . . . ' . 229
SUPPLEMENTARY TABLES
I. Indian Works .... 233
II. The Kalilag and Damnag Litera ture 237
III. The Barlaam and Josaphat
Literature . . . 239
IV. The Cariya Pitaka and the Jataka
Mala .'.... 243
V. Alphabetical List of Jataka Stories
in the Mahavastu . . . 244
VI. Places at which the Tales were
Told 245
VII. The Bodisats .... 246
VIII. Jatakas Illustrated in Bas-relief on
the Ancient Monuments . 247
IX. Former Buddhas ... 249
Index 250
EDITORIAL NOTE
fTlHIS essay and the following translation were J- published in 1880 as a volume in Triibner's Oriental Series. That volume contained, further, the beginning of a much longer work, namely the translation of the so-called Jataka. This is a collection of upwards of 550 folk-lore 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. Some thing 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.
The original volume has long been out of print. The writer, passing on to other pioneer work, handed over the long task of the Jataka transla tion to the late Professor E. B. Cowell. Under his editorship and up to his death the work was carried out by a group of translators and was issued during 1895-1907 by the Cambridge University Press. Naturally the remainder of
x EDITORIAL NOTE
the original volume herewith re-issued could not take its proper place at the head of the complete translation.
It has long been out of print. But neither the introductory essay nor the translation of the Nidana-katha or Jataka introductory chronicle has been superseded. Hence it has seemed good to the house of Routledge, in taking up the mantle of the house of Triibner, to issue a fresh edition of both. Hereby a service is rendered to all inquirers into the history of Indian literature, and especially into a phase of it which has held much significance in the Buddhist tradition and is of no small interest for the general mind of to-day.
Jataka means 'birth-let', 'birth-er', or collec tively ' birth-anea '. And the * story of the lineage ' is a biography of Gotama Buddha so far as it includes those earth-lives which he was said to have lived under preceding Buddhas, and also the life he lived as himself a Buddha down to the time when his new church had won a footing. It is not from a modern standpoint a logically necessary preface. We should deem ourselves* better instructed had the compilers of prefaces and following stories told us something about the sources of story and verse and episode.
But for the old-world orthodox Buddhist, rapt in contemplation of his Great Man (mahd-purisa) the chief end of the work — discounting the end less entertainment afiorded then (and even now) by the stories — was to throw light on that notable object of his worship. The stories were episodes in the founding and grounding, down an im memorial past, of that wonderful product, the
EDITORIAL NOTE xi
character of a Tathagata of « him-who-had-thus- come '. The introductory narrative is chiefly concerned with the two great milestones in his career : the milestone when the conscious will to become a helper of men first awoke, and the milestone when that will had reached such per fection that he could become such a helper.
This narrative came to be called the Discourse of the Nidana. In translating Nidana by ' lineage V a verbal difficulty has been solved more by the spirit of the contents than by the letter of the title. The word niddna is usually rendered by cause, source, base, origin. None of these would convey a meaning to English readers. In Buddhist perspective the narrative reveals a long, long line of ancestors. These are not ancestors ' after the flesh '. These are not ancestors by what we reckon as heredity. We merge the individual in the family, the tribe, the race. In Buddhism the line of the individual stands out much more strongly, in startling incongruity with its church's rejection of ' the man '. These are ancestors of ' dead selves ' through whom, again and again reborn, the ' man ' whose will is set on the best he knows, may rise as ' on stepping-stones to higher things '. ' Dead selves ' is a poor wording, but by it Tennyson meets the Buddhist point of view not inaptly. The word niddna suggests something serial, or connected in line. La is ' to bind ' ; ni means * along '. And so we get the notion of chain or series of antecedents. And that, in the matter of living ascent or descent, is lineage.
1 Rhys Davids left the word untranslated.
xii EDITORIAL NOTE
The Nidana Katha, as forming a running commentary on the Buddhavamsa (chronicle of the Buddhas), itself a canonical book, is a later comer into the Canon. In its treatment of the Buddha-legend — and the story of the life of the very real founder had by that time become legendary — it occupies a midway house between the biographical fragments in Vinaya and chief Nikayas, and those later more highly embroidered * lives ' of which there are not a few. The nimbus and the rays and the beauty of the figure have come in. But the narrative is still relatively simple. The historical question of Jat^ka literature may be followed up in Rhys Davids's Buddhist India, 2nd ed., 1903, in Oldenberg's 'The Akhyana Type and the Jatakas ', Jl. Pali Text Society, 1912, and in Dr. Winternitz's art : Jataka, Ency. Religion and Ethics and his Geschichte der Indischen Litter atur II, pt. 1, p. 89, and 149, 1913.
The revising in this re-issue has been solely of a number of small details in transliteration, in closer accuracy of translation, and in dis carding certain renderings in this, his earliest published translation, which Rhys Davids had in later works himself discarded.
C. A. F. RHYS DAVIDS.
INTRODUCTION
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 pre served for the study and amusement of later times. How this came about is not at present quite certain. The belief of orthodox Buddhists on the subject is this : — The Buddha, as occasion 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 life time 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 learned and repeated by his disciples ; and after his death 550 of them were gathered together in one collection, called the Book of the 550 Jatakas or Birthlets. The commentary to these gives for each Jataka, or Birth Story, an account of the event in Gotama's life which led to his first telling that particular story. Both text and com mentary were then handed down, in the Pali language in which they were composed, to the time of the Council of Patna (held in or about the year 250 B.C.) ;
i
6
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
and they were carried in the following year to Ceylon by the great missionary Mahinda, the son of Asoka. There the commentary was written down in Singhalese, 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 Jataka stories themselves has been throughout preserved in its original Pali 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 im mediately 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 im portance 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 Pali 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, ii
INTRODUCTION
riddles, and comic and moral stories, of which the Buddhist Collection — known as the Jdtaka Book — consists, 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 presenting the stories in a style which will probably seem strange, and even wooden, to the modern reader. But it cannot be admitted that, even for purposes of comparison, it would be sufficient to reproduce the stories in a modern form which should aim at com bining substantial accuracy with a pleasing dress.
And the Book of Birth Stories has a value quite independent of the fact that many of its tales have been transplanted to the West. It contains a record of the every-day life, and every-day thought, of the people among whom the tales were told : it is the
iii
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
oldest, most complete, and most important collection of folk-lore extant.
The whole value of its evidence in this respect would be lost, if a translator, by slight additions in some places, slight omissions in others, and slight modifica tions here and there, should run the risk of conveying erroneous impressions of early Buddhist beliefs, and habits, and modes of thought. It is important, there fore, that the reader should understand, before reading the stories I intend to give, that while trans lating sentence by sentence, rather than word by word, I have never lost sight of the importance of retaining in the English version, as far as possible, not only the phraseology, but the style and spirit of the Buddhist story-teller.
The first specimen I propose to give is a half-moral half -comic story, which runs as follows.
THE ASS IN THE LION'S SKIN
Siha-Chamma JdtaJca (Fausboll, no. 189)
Once upon a time, while Brahma-datta was reigning in Benares, the future Buddha was born one of a peasant family ; and when he grew up, he gained his living by tilling the ground.
At that time a hawker used to go from place to place, trafficking in goods carried by an ass. Now at each place he came to, when to took the pack down from the ass's back he used to clothe him in a lion's skin, and turn him loose in the rice and barley-fields,
iv
INTRODUCTION
and when the watchmen in the fields saw the ass, they dared not go near him, taking him for a lion.
So one day the hawker stopped in a village ; and whilst he was getting his own breakfast cooked, he dressed the ass in a lion's skin, and turned him loose in a barley-field. The watchmen in the field dared not go up to him ; but going home, they published the news. Then all the villagers came out with weapons in their hands ; and blowing chanks, and beating drums, they went near the field and shouted.
Terrified with the fear of death, the ass uttered a cry
the cry of an ass !
And when he knew him then to be an ass, the future Buddha pronounced the First Stanza :
' This is not a lion's roaring, Nor a tiger's, nor a panther's ; Dressed in a lion's skin, 'Tis a wretched ass that roars ! "
But when the villagers knew the creature to be an ass, they beat him till his bones broke ; and, carrying off the lion's skin, went away. Then the hawker came, and seeing the ass fallen into so bad a plight, pro nounced the Second Stanza :
" Long might the ass, Clad in a lion's skin, Have fed on barley green.
But he brayed ! And that moment he came to ruin."
And even while he was yet speaking the ass died on the spot !
This story will doubtless sound familiar enough to English ears ; for a similar tale is found in our modern
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
collections of so-called M 'sop's Fables.1 Professor Benfey has further traced it in mediaeval French, German, Turkish, and Indian literature.2 But it may have been much older than any of these books ; for the fable possibly gave rise to a proverb of which we find traces among the Greeks as early as the time of Plato.3 Lucian gives the fable in full, localizing it at Kume, in South Italy,4 and Julien has given us a Chinese version in his Avaddnas.5 Erasmus, in his work on proverbs,6 alludes to the fable ; and so also does our own Shakespeare in King John.7 It is worthy of mention that in one of the later story-books — in a Persian translation, that is, of the Hitopadesa — there is a version of our fable in which it is the vanity of the ass in trying to sing which leads to his disguise being discovered, and thus brings him to grief.8 But Professor Benfey has shown,9 that this version is simply the rolling into one of the present tale and of
1 James's ^Estop's Fables (London, Murray, 1852), p. Ill ; La Fontaine, Book v, no. 21 ; ^Esop (Greek text, ed. Furia, 141, 262 ; ed. Corite, 113) ; Babrius (Lewis, vol. ii, p. 43).
2 Benfey 's PancJia Tantra, Book iv, no. 7, in the note 011 which, at vol. i, p. 462, he refers to Halm, p. 333 ; Robert, in the Fables inedites du Moyen Age, vol. i, p. 360 ; and the Turkish Tutl- namah (Rosen, vol. ii, p. 149). In India it is found also in the Northern Buddhist Collection called Kathd Sarit Sagara, by Somadeva ; and in Hitopadesa (iii, 2, Max Miiller, p. 110).
3 Kratylos, 411 (ed. Tauchnitz, ii, 275).
4 Lucian, Piscator, 32
5 Vol. ii, no. 91.
6 Adagia, under Asinus apud Cumanos.
7 Act ii, scene 1 ; and again, Act iii, scene 1.
8 De Sacy, Notes et Extraits, x, 1, 247.
9 loc. cit., p. 463.
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INTRODUCTION
another also widely prevalent, where an ass by trying to sing earns for himself, not thanks, but blows.1 I shall hereafter attempt to draw some conclusions from the history of the story. But I would here point out that the fable could scarcely have originated in any country in which lions were not common ; and that the Jataka story gives a reasonable explanation of the ass being dressed in the skin, instead of saying that he dressed himself in it, as is said in our Msop's Fables.
The reader will notice that the " moral " of the tale is contained in two stanzas, one of which is put into the mouth of the Bodisat or future Buddha. This will be found to be the case in all the Birth Stories, save that the number of the stanzas differs, and that they are usually all spoken by the Bodisat. It should also be noticed that the identification of the peasant's son with the Bodisat, which is of so little importance to the story, is the only part of it which is essentially Buddhistic. Both these points will be of importance further on.
The introduction of the human element takes this story, perhaps, out of the class of fables in the most exact sense of that word. I therefore add a story containing a fable proper, where animals speak and act like men.
1 Pancha Tantra, v, 7. Professor Weber (Indische Studien, iii, 352) compares Phsedrus (Dressier, A pp. vi. 2) and Erasmus's A dagia under Asinus ad Lyrum. See also Tuti-ndmah (Bosen ii, 218) ; and I would add Varro, in Aulus Gellius, iii, 16 ; and Jerome, Ep. 27 : Ad Marcellam.
vii
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
THE TALKATIVE TORTOISE
Kacchapa Jdtaka (Fausboll, no. 215)
Once upon a time, when Brahma-datta was reigning in Benares, the future Buddha was born in a minister's family ; and when he grew up, he became the king's adviser in things temporal and spiritual.
Now this king was very talkative : while he was speaking, others had no opportunity for a word. And the future Buddha, wanting to cure this talkativeness of his, was constantly seeking for some meana of doing so.
At that time there was living, in a pond in the Himalaya mountains, a tortoise. Two young hangsas (i.e. wild ducks l) who came to feed there, made friends with him. And one day, when they had become very intimate with him, they said to the tortoise :
" Friend tortoise ! the place where we live, at the Golden Cave on Mount Beautiful in the Himalaya country, is a delightful spot. Will you come there with us ? "
" But how can I get there ? "
" We can take you, if you can only hold your tongue, and will say nothing to anybody." 2
1 Often rendered swan, a favourite bird in Indian tales, and constantly represented in Buddhist carvings. It is the original Golden Goose. See Jataka, no. 136.
2 There is an old story of a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, who inherited a family living. He went in great trouble to Dr. Routh, the Head of his College, saying that he doubted whether he could hold, at the same time, the Living and the Fellowship. " You can hold anything," was the reply, " if you can only hold your tongue." And he held all three.
viii
INTRODUCTION
" 0 ! that I can do. Take me with you."
" That's right," said they. And making the tortoise bite hold of a stick, they themselves took the two ends in their teeth, and flew up into the air.1
Seeing him thus carried by the hangsas, some villagers called out, " Two wild ducks are carrying a tortoise along on a stick ! " Whereupon the tortoise wanted to say, " If my friends choose to carry me, what is that to you, you wretched slaves ! " So just as the swift flight of the wild ducks had brought him over the king's palace in the city of Benares, he let go of the stick he was biting, and falling in the open courtyard, split in two ! And there arose a universal cry : "A tortoise has fallen in the open courtyard, and has split in two ! "
The king, taking the future Buddha, went to the place, surrounded by his courtiers, and looking at the tortoise, he asked the Bodisat : " Teacher ! how comes he to be fallen here ? "
The future Buddha thought to himself : " Long expecting, wishing to admonish the king, have I sought for some means of doing so. This tortoise must have made friends with the wild ducks ; and they must have made him bite hold of the stick, and have flown up into the air to take him to the hills. But he, being unable to hold his tongue when he hears any one else talk, must have wanted to say something, and let go the stick ; and so must have fallen down from the sky, and thus lost his life." And saying " Truly, 0 king ! those who are called chatter-boxes —people whose words have no end — come to grief like this," he uttered these verses :
1 In the Vinlla JdtaJca (no. 160) they similarly carry a crow to the Himalaya mountains.
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BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
" Verily the tortoise killed himself Whilst uttering his voice ; Though he was holding tight the stick, By a word himself he slew.
" Behold him then, 0 excellent by strength ! And speak wise words, not out of season. You see how, by his talking overmuch, The tortoise fell into this wretched plight ! " '
The king saw that he was himself referred to, and said : "0 Teacher ! are you speaking of us ? "
And the Bodisat spake openly, and said : " 0 great king ! be it thou, or be it any other, whoever talks beyond measure meets with some mishap like this."
And the king henceforth refrained himself, and became a man of few words.
This story too is found also in Greek, Latin, Arabic, Persian, and in most European languages,1 though, strangely enough, it does not occur in our books of M 'sop's Fables. But in the M 'sop's Fables is usually included a story of a tortoise who asked an eagle to teach him to fly ; and being dropped, split in two ! 2
1 Panca Tantra, vol. 1, p. 13, where Professor Benfey (i, 239-41) traces also the later versions in different languages. He mentions Wolff's German translation of the Kalilah and Dimnah, vol. i, p. 91 ; Knatchbull's English version, p. 146 ; Simeon Seth's Greek version, p. 28 ; John of Capua's Directorium Humance Vitce 1), 5 b ; the German translation of this last (Ulm, 1483), F. viii, 6 ; the Spanish translation, xix a ; Firenzuola, 65 ; Doni, 93 ; Anvnr i Suhaili, p. 159 ; Le Lime des Lumieres (1664, 8vo), 124; Le Cabinet des Fees, xvii, 309. See also Conies et Fables Indiennes de Bidpai et de LoJcman, ii, 112 ; La Fontaine, x, 3 (where the ducks fly to America !) ; and Bickell's Kalilag und Dimnag, p. 24. In India it is found in Somadeva, and in the Hitopadesa, iv, 2 (Max Mtiller, p. 126). See also Julien, i, 71.
2 This version is found in Babrius (Lewis, i, 122) ; Pbcedrus, ii, 7, and vii, 14 (Orelli, 55, 128) ; and in the ^sopsean collections (Fur. 193 ; Corise, 61) and in Abstemius, 108.
INTRODUCTION
It is worthy of notice that in the Southern recension of the Panca Tantra it is eagles, and not wild ducks or swans, who carry the tortoise ; x and there can, I think, be little doubt that the two fables are historically connected.
Another fable, very familiar to modern readers, is stated in the commentary to have been first related in ridicule of a kind of Mutual Admiration Society existing among the opponents of the Buddha. Hear ing the monks talking about the foolish way in which Devadatta and Kokalika went about among the people ascribing each to the other virtues which neither possessed, he is said to have told this tale.
THE JACKAL AND THE CROW
Jambu-KMdaka Jdtaka (Fausboll, no. 294)
Long, long ago, when Brahma-datta was reigning in Benares, the Bodisat had come to life as a tree- fairy, dwelling in a certain grove of jambu- trees.
Now a crow was sitting there one day on the branch of a jambu-tree, eating the jambu-fruits, when a jackal coming by, looked up, and saw him.
" Ha ! " thought he. " I'll natter that fellow, and get some of those j ambus to eat." And thereupon he uttered this verse in his praise :
" Who may this be, whose rich and pleasant notes Proclaim him best of all the singing-birds ? Warbling so sweetly on the jambu-branch, Where like a peacock he sits firm and grand ! "
1 Dubois, p. 109.
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BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
Then the crow, to pay him back his compliments, replied in this second verse :
" 'Tis a well-bred young gentleman, who understands To speak of gentlemen in terms polite ! Good Sir ! — whose shape and glossy coat reveal The tiger's offspring — eat of these, I pray ! "
And so saying, he shook the branch of the jambu- tree till he made the fruit to fall.
But when the fairy who dwelt in that tree saw the two of them, now they had done nattering one another, eating the j ambus together, he uttered a third verse :
" Too long, forsooth, I've borne the sight Of these poor chatterers of lies— The refuse-eater and the offal-eater Belauding each other ! "
And making himself visible in awful shape, he frightened them away from the place !
It is easy to understand that, when this story had been carried out of those countries where the crow and the jackal are the common scavengers, it would lose its point ; and it may very well, therefore, have been shortened into the fable of the Fox and the Crow and the piece of cheese. On the other hand, the latter is so complete and excellent a story that it would scarcely have been expanded, if it had been the original, into the tale of the Jackal and the Crow.1
The next tale to be quoted is one showing how a wise
1 See La Fontaine, Bk. i, no. 2, and the current collections of Msop's Fables (e.g. James's ed., p. 136). It should be added that the Jambukfiadaka-sangyutta in the Sangyutta Nikaya has nothing to do with our fable. The ' j ambu-eater ' of that story is an ascetic, who lives on j ambus, and is converted by a discussion on Nirvana.
xii
INTRODUCTION
man solves a difficulty. I give it from a Singhalese version of the fourteenth century, which is nearer to the Pali than any other as yet known.1 It is an episode in the long Jataka called
THE BIRTH AS "GREAT PHYSICIAN"2
MahosadJia Jataka (Fausboll, no. 546)
A woman, carrying her child, went to the future Buddha's tank to wash. And having first bathed the child, she put on her upper garment and descended into the water to bathe herself.
Then a Yakshini,3 seeing the child, had a craving to eat it. And taking the form of a woman, she drew near, and asked the mother :
" Friend, this is a very pretty child, is it one of yours ? "
And when she was told it was, she asked if she might nurse it. And this being allowed, she nursed it a little, and then carried it off.
But when the mother saw this, she ran after her, and cried out : " Where are you taking my child to ? " and caught hold of her.
1 The Singhalese text will be found in the Sidat Sangardtva, p. clxxvi.
2 Literally " the great medicine ". The Bodisat of that time received this name because he was born with a powerful drug in his hand — an omen of the cleverness in device by which, when he grew up, he delivered people from their misfortunes. Compare my Buddhism, p. 187.
3 The Yakshas, products of witchcraft and cannibalism, are beings of magical power, who feed on human flesh. The male Yaksha occupies in Buddhist stories a position similar to that of the wicked geni in the Arabian Nights ; the female Yakshini, who occurs more frequently, usually plays the part of siren.
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BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
The Yakshini boldly said ; " Where did you get the child from ? It is mine ! " And so quarrelling, they passed the door of the future Buddha's Judgment Hall.
He heard the noise, sent for them, inquired into the matter, and asked them whether they would abide by his decision. And they agreed. Then he had a line drawn on the ground ; and told the Yakshini to take hold of the child's arms, and the mother to take hold of its legs ; and said : " The child shall be hers who drags him over the line."
But as soon as they pulled at him, the mother, seeing how he suffered, grieved as if her heart would break. And letting him go, she stood there weeping.
Then the future Buddha asked the bystanders : " Whose hearts are tender to babes ? those who have borne children, or those who have not ? "
And they answered : "0 Sire ! the hearts of mothers are tender."
Then he said : " Who, think you, is the mother ? she who has the child in her arms, or she who has let go ? "
And they answered : " She who has let go is the mother."
And he said : " Then do you all think that the other was the thief ? "
And they answered : " Sire ! we cannot tell."
And he said : " Verily this is a Yakshini, who took the child to eat it."
And they asked : " 0 Sire ! how did you know it ? "
And he replied : " Because her eyes winked not, and were red, and she knew no fear, and had no pity, I knew it."
And so saying, he demanded of the thief : " Who
are you ?
xiv
INTRODUCTION
And she said : " Lord ! I am a Yakshini."
And he asked : " Why did you take away this
child 1 "
And she said : " I thought to eat him, 0 my Lord ! " And he rebuked her, saying : "0 foolish woman !
For your former sins you have been born a Yakshim,
and now do you still sin ! " And he laid a vow upon
her to keep the Five Commandments, and let her go. But the mother of the child exalted the future
Buddha, and said : " 0 my Lord ! 0 Great Physician !
may thy life be long ! " And she went away, with
her babe clasped to her bosom.
The Hebrew story, in which a similar judgment is ascribed to Solomon, occurs in the Book of Kings, which is probably older than the time of Gotama. We shall consider below what may be the connexion between the two.
The next specimen is a tale about lifeless things endowed with miraculous powers ; perhaps the oldest tale in the world of that kind which has been yet published. It is an episode in
SAKKA'S PRESENTS
Dadhi-Vdhana JdtaJca (Fausboll, no. 186)
Once upon a time, when Brahma-datta was reigning in Benares, four brothers, Brahmans, of that kingdom, devoted themselves to an ascetic life ; and having built themselves huts at equal distances in the region
xv
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
of the Himalaya mountains, took up their residence there.
The eldest of them died, and was reborn as the god Sakka.1 When he became aware of this, he used to go and render help at intervals every seven or eight days to the others. And one day, having greeted the eldest hermit, and sat down beside him, he asked him : " Reverend Sir, what are you in need of ? "
The hermit, who suffered from jaundice, answered : " I want fire ! " So he gave him a double-edged hatchet.
But the hermit said : " Who is to take this, and bring me firewood ? "
Then Sakka spake thus to him : " Whenever, reverend Sir, you want firewood, you should let go the hatchet from your hand and say : * Please fetch me firewood : make me fire ! ' And it will do so."
So he gave him the hatchet ; and went to the second hermit, and asked : " Reverend Sir, what are you in need of ? "
Now the elephants had made a track for themselves close to his hut. And he was annoyed by those elephants, and said : "I am much troubled by elephants ; drive them away."
Sakka, handing him a drum, said : " Reverend Sir, if you strike on this side of it, your enemies will take to flight ; but if you strike on this side, they will
1 Not quite the same as Jupiter. Sakka is a very harmless and gentle kind of god, not a jealous god, nor given to lasciviousness or spite. Neither is he immortal : he dies from time to time ; and, if he has behaved well, is reborn under happy conditions. Mean while somebody else, usually one of the sons of men who has deserved it, succeeds, for a hundred thousand years or so, to his name and place and glory. Sakka can call to mind his experiences in his former birth, a gift in which he surpasses most other beings. He was also given to a kind of practical joking, by which he tempted people, and has become a mere beneficent fairy.
xvi
INTRODUCTION
become friendly, and surround you on all sides with an army in fourfold array." l
So lie gave him the drum ; and went to the third hermit, and asked : " Keverend Sir, what are you in need of ? "
He was also affected with jaundice, and said, there fore : "I want sour milk."
Sakka gave him a milk-bowl, and said : "If you wish for anything, and turn this bowl over, it will become a great river, and pour out such a torrent, that it will be able to take a kingdom, and give it to you."
And Sakka went away. But thenceforward the hatchet made fire for the eldest hermit ; when the second struck one side of his drum, the elephants ran away ; and the third enjoyed his curds.
Now at that time a wild boar, straying in a forsaken village, saw a gem of magical power. When he seized this in his mouth, he rose by its magic into the air, and went to an island in the midst of the ocean. And thinking " Here now I ought to live ", he descended, and took up his abode in a convenient spot under an Udumbara-tree. And one day, placing the gem before him, he fell asleep at the foot of the tree.
Now a certain man of the land of Kasi had been expelled from home by his parents, who said : " This fellow is of no use to us." So he went to a seaport, and embarked in a ship as a servant to the sailors. And the ship was wrecked ; but by the help of a plank he reached that very island. And while he was looking about for fruits, he saw the boar asleep ; and going softly up, he took hold of the gem.
1 That is, infantry, cavalry, chariots of war, and elephants of war. Truly a useful kind of present to give to a pious hermit !
xvii
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
Then by its magical power he straightway rose right up into the air ! So, taking a seat on the Udumbara-tree, he said to himself : " Methinks this boar must have become a sky-walker through the magic of this gem. That's how he got to be living here ! It's plain enough what I ought to do ; I'll first of all kill and eat him, and then I can get away ! "
So he broke a twig off the tree, and dropped it on his head. The boar woke up, and not seeing the gem, ran about, trembling, this way and that way. The man seated on the tree laughed. The boar, looking up, saw him, and dashing his head against the tree, died on the spot.
But the man descended, cooked his flesh, ate it, and rose into the air. And as he was passing along the summit of the Himalaya range, he saw a hermitage ; and descending at the hut of the eldest hermit, he stayed there two or three days, and waited on the hermit ; and thus became aware of the magic power of the hatchet.
" I must get that ", thought he. And he showed the hermit the magic power of his gem, and said : " Sir, do you take this, and give me your hatchet." The ascetic, full of longing to be able to fly through the air,1 did so. But the man, taking the hatchet, went a little way off, and letting it go, said : " 0 hatchet ! cut off that hermit's head, and bring the gern to me ! " And it went, and cut off the hermit's head, and brought him the gem.
Then he put the hatchet in a secret place, and went to the second hermit, and stayed there a few days.
1 The power of going through the air is usually considered in Indian legends to be the result, and a proof, of great holiness, and long-continued penance. So the hermit thought he would get a fine reputation cheaply.
xviii
INTRODUCTION
And having thus become aware of the magic power of the drum, he exchanged the gem for the drum ; and cut off his head too in the same way as before.
Then he went to the third hermit, and saw the magic power of the milk-bowl ; and exchanging the gem for it, caused his head to be cut off in the same manner. And taking the gem, and the hatchet, and the drum, and the milk-bowl, he flew away up into the air.
Not far from the city of Benares he stopped, and sent by the hand of a man a letter to the king of Benares to this effect : " Either do battle, or give me up your kingdom ! "
No sooner had he heard that message than the king sallied forth, saying : " Let us catch the scoundrel ! "
But the man beat one side of his drum, and a four fold army stood around him ! And directly he saw that the king's army was drawn out in battle array, he poured out his milk-bowl ; and a mighty river arose, and the multitude, sinking down in it, were not able to escape ! Then letting go the hatchet, he said : " Bring me the king's head ! " And the hatchet went, and brought the king's head, and threw it at his feet ; and no one had time even to raise a weapon !
Then he entered the city in the midst of his great army, and caused himself to be anointed king, under the name of Dadhi-vahana (Bringer of Milk), and governed the kingdom with righteousness.1
The story goes on to relate how the king planted a wonderful mango, how the sweetness of its fruit turned to sourness through the too-close proximity of bitter herbs (!), and how the Bodisat, then the king's
1 Compare Maha-bharata, xii, 1796. XIX
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
minister, pointed out that evil communications corrupt good things. But it is the portion above trans lated which deserves notice as the most ancient example known of those tales in which inanimate objects are endowed with magical powers ; and in which the seven league boots, or the wishing cup, or the vanishing hat, or the wonderful lamp, render their fortunate possessors happy and glorious. There is a very tragical story of a wishing cup in the Buddhist Collection,1 where the wishing cup, how ever, is turned into ridicule. It is not unpleasant to find that beliefs akin to, and perhaps the result of, fetish-worship, had faded away, among Buddhist story-tellers, into sources of innocent amusement.
In this curious tale the hatchet, the drum, and the milk-bowl are endowed with qualities much more fit for the use they were put to in the latter part of the story, than to satisfy the wants of the hermits. It is common ground with satirists how little, save sorrow, men would gain if they could have anything they chose to ask for. But, unlike the others we have quoted, the tale in its present shape has a flavour dis tinctively Buddhist in the irreverent way in which it treats the great god Sakka, the Jupiter of the pre- Buddhistic Hindus. It takes for granted too, that the hero ruled in righteousness ; and this is as common in the Jatakas as the ' lived happily ever after ' of modern love stories.
This last idea recurs more strongly in the Birth Story called
1 Fausboll, no. 291. XX
INTRODUCTION
A LESSON FOR KINGS
Rdjovdda Jdtaka (Fausboll, no. 151)
Once upon a time, when Bralimadatta was reigning in Benares, the future Buddha returned to life in the womb of his chief queen ; and after the conception ceremony had been performed, he was safely born. And when the day came for choosing a name, they called him Prince Brahmadatta. He grew up in due course ; and when he was sixteen years old, went to Takkasila,1 and became accomplished in all arts. And after his father died he ascended the throne, and ruled the kingdom with righteousness and equity. He gave judgments without partiality, hatred, ignorance, or fear.2 Since he thus reigned with justice, with justice also his ministers administered the law. Lawsuits being thus decided with justice, there were none who brought false cases. And as these ceased, the noise and tumult of litigation ceased in the king's court. Though the judges sat all day in the court, they had to leave without any one coming for justice. It came to this, that the Hall of Justice would have to be closed !
Then the future Buddha thought : " From my reigning with righteousness there are none who come for judgment ; the bustle has ceased, and the Hall of Justice will have to be closed. It behoves me, there fore, now to examine into my own faults ; and if I
1 This is the well-known town in the Panjab, called by the Greeks Taxila, and famed in Buddhist legend as the great university of ancient India, as Nalanda was in later times.
2 Literally " without partiality and the rest ", that is, the rest of the agatis, the actions forbidden to judges (and to kings as judges).
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
find that anything is wrong in me, to put that away, and practise only virtue."
Thenceforth he sought for some one to tell him his faults ; but among those around him he found no one who would tell him of any fault, but heard only his own praise.
Then he thought : "It is from fear of me that these men speak only good things, and not evil things," and he sought among those people who lived outside the palace. And finding no fault-finder there, he sought among those who lived outside the city, in the suburbs, at the four gates.1 And there too finding no one to find fault, and hearing only his own praise, he determined to search the country places.
So he made over the kingdom to his ministers, and mounted his chariot ; and taking only his charioteer, left the city in disguise. And searching the country through, up to the very boundary, he found no fault finder, and heard only of his own virtue ; and so he turned back from the outermost boundary, and returned by the high road towards the city.
Now at that time the king of Kosala, Mallika by name, was also ruling his kingdom with righteousness ; and when seeking for some fault in himself, he also found no fault-finder in the palace, but only heard of his own virtue ! So seeking in country places, he too came to that very spot. And these two came face to face in a low cart-track with precipitous sides, where there was no space for a chariot to get out of the way !
Then the charioteer of Mallika the king said to the charioteer of the king of Benares : " Take thy chariot out of the way ! "
1 The gates opening towards the four " directions ", that is, the four cardinal points of the compass.
xxii
INTRODUCTION
But he said : " Take thy chariot out of the way, 0 charioteer ! In this chariot sitteth the lord over the kingdom of Benares, the great king Brahma- datta."
Yet the other replied : "In this chariot. 0 charioteer, sitteth the lord over the kingdom of Kosala, the great king Mallika. Take thy carriage out of the way, and make room for the chariot of our king ! "
Then the charioteer of the king of Benares thought : " They say then that he too is a king ! What is now to be done ? " After some consideration, he said to himself, " I know a way. I'll find out how old he is, and then I'll let the chariot of the younger be got out of the way, and so make room for the elder."
And when he had arrived at that conclusion, he asked that charioteer what the age of the king of Kosala was. But on inquiry he found that the ages of both were equal. Then he inquired about the extent of his kingdom, and about his army, and his wealth, and his renown, and about the country he lived in, and his caste and tribe and family. And he found that both were lords of a kingdom three hundred leagues in extent ; and that in respect of army and wealth and renown, and the countries in which they lived, and their caste and their tribe and their family, they were just on a par !
Then he thought : "I will make way for the most righteous." And he asked : " What kind of righteous ness has this king of yours ? "
And the other saying : " Such and such is our king's righteousness", and so proclaiming his king's wickedness as goodness, uttered the First Stanza :
xxiii
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
The strong he overthrows by strength, The mild by mildness, Mallika ; The good by goodness he o'ercomes, The wicked by the wicked too. Such is the nature of this king ! Move out of the way, 0 charioteer !
But the charioteer of the king of Benares asked him : " Well, have you told all the virtues of your king ? "
" Yes ", said the other.
" If these are his virtues, where are then his faults ? " replied he.
The other said : " Well, for the nonce, they shall be faults, if you like ! But pray, then, what is the kind of goodness your king has ? "
And then the charioteer of the king of Benares called unto him to hearken, and uttered the Second Stanza :
Anger he conquers by not-anger,
By goodness he conquers what is not good ;
The stingy he conquers by giving gifts,
By truth he meets the speaker of lies.
Such is the nature of this king !
Move out of the way, 0 charioteer ! "
And when he had thus spoken, both Mallika the king and his charioteer alighted from their chariot. And they took out the horses, and removed their chariot, and made way for the king of Benares !
But the king of Benares exhorted Mallika the king, saying : " Thus and thus is it right to do." And returning to Benares, he practised charity, and did other good deeds, and so when his life was ended he passed away to heaven.
And Mallika the king took his exhortation to heart ;
xxiv
INTRODUCTION
and having in vain searched the country through for a fault-finder, he too returned to his own city, and practised charity and other good deeds ; and so at the end of his life he went to heaven.
The mixture in this Jataka of earnestness with dry humour is very instructive. The exaggeration in the earlier part of the story ; the hint that law depends in reality on false cases ; the suggestion that to decide cases justly would by itself put an end not only to " the block in the law courts ", but even to all law suits ; the way in which it is brought about that two mighty kings should meet, unattended, in a narrow lane ; the cleverness of the first charioteer in getting out of his difficulties ; the brand-new method of settling the delicate question of precedence — a method which, logically carried out, would destroy the necessity of such questions being raised at all ; — all this is the amusing side of the Jataka. It throws, and is meant to throw, an air of unreality over the story ; and it is none the less humour because it is left to be inferred, because it is only an aroma which might easily escape unnoticed, only the humour of naive absurdity and of clever repartee.
But none the less also is the story-teller thoroughly in earnest ; he really means that justice is noble, that to conquer evil by good is the right thing, and that goodness is the true measure of greatness. The object is edification also, and not amusement only. The lesson itself is quite Buddhistic. The first four lines of the Second Moral are indeed included, as xxv
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
verse 223, in the Dhammapada or " Scripture Verses ", perhaps the most sacred and most widely learnt book of the Buddhist Bible ; and the distinction between the two ideals of virtue is in harmony with all Buddhist ethics. It is by no means, however, exclusively Buddhistic. It gives expression to an idea that would be consistent with most of the later religions ; and is found also in the great Hindu Epic, the Mahd Bhdrata, which has been called the Bible of the Hindus.1 It is true that further on in that poem is found the opposite sentiment, attributed in our story to the king of Mallika ; 2 and that the higher teaching is in one of the latest portions of the Mahd Bhdrata, and probably of Buddhist origin. But when we find that the Buddhist principle of overcoming evil by good was received, as well as its opposite, into the Hindu poem, it is clear that this lofty doctrine was by no means repugnant to the best among the Brahmans.3
It is to be regretted that some writers on Buddhism have been led away by their just admiration for the noble teaching of Gotama into an unjust depreciation of the religious system of which his own was, after all, but the highest product and result. There were
1 Maha-Bharata, v, 1518. Another passage at iii, 13253, is very similar.
2 Maha-Bharata, xii,4052. See Dr. Muir's M etrical Translations from Sanskrit Writers (1879), pp. xxxi, 88, 275, 356.
3 Similar passages will also be found in Lao Tse, Douglas's Confucianism, etc., p. 197 ; PanchaTantra, i, 247 (277) = iv, 72 ; in Stobaeus, quoted by Muir, p. 356 ; and in St. Matthew, v, 44-6 ; while the Mallika doctrine is inculcated by Confucius (Legge, Chinese Classics, i, 152).
xxvi
INTRODUCTION
doubtless among the Brahmans uncompromising advocates of the worst privileges of caste, of the most debasing belief in the efficacy of rites and ceremonies ; but this verse is only one among many others which are incontestable evidence of the wide prevalence also of a spirit of justice, and of an earnest seeking after truth. It is, in fact, inaccurate to draw any hard-and- fast line between the Indian Buddhists and their countrymen of other faiths. After the first glow of the Buddhist reformation had passed away, there was probably as little difference between Buddhist and Hindu as there was between the two kings in the story which has just been told.
THE KALILAG AND DAMNAG LITERATURE
Among the other points of similarity between Buddhists and Hindus, there is one which deserves more especial mention here — that of their liking for the kind of moral-comic tales which form the bulk of the Buddhist Birth Stories. That this partiality was by no means confined to the Buddhists is apparent from the fact that books of such tales have been amongst the most favourite literature of the Hindus. And this is the more interesting to us, as it is these Hindu collections that have most nearly preserved the form in which many of the Indian stories have been carried to the West.
The oldest of the collections now extant is the one
already referred to, the PANCHA TANTRA, that is,
the ' Five Books ', a kind of Hindu Pentateuch or Pen-
tamerone. In its earliest form this work is unfor-
xxvii
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
tunately no longer extant ; but in the sixth century of our era a book very much like it formed part of a work translated into Pahlavi, or Ancient Persian ; and thence, about 750 A.D., into Syriac, under the title of KALILAG AND DAMNAG, and into Arabic under the title KALILAH AND DIMNAH.1
These tales, though originally Buddhist, became great favourites among the Arabs ; and as the Arabs were gradually brought into contact with Europeans, and penetrated into the South of Europe, they brought the stories with them ; and we soon after wards find them translated into Western tongues. It would be impossible within the limits of this preface to set out in full detail the intricate literary history involved in this statement ; and while I must refer the student to the Tables appended to this Introduction for fuller information, I can only give here a short summary of the principal facts.
It is curious to notice that it was the Jews to whom we owe the earliest versions. Whilst their mercantile pursuits took them much amongst the followers of the Prophet, and the comparative nearness of their religious beliefs led to a freer intercourse than was usually possible between Christians and Moslems, they were naturally attracted by a kind of literature such as this — Oriental in morality, amusing in style, and perfectly free from Christian legend and from Christian dogma. It was also the kind of literature
1 The names are corruptions of the Indian names of the two jackals, Karatak and Damanak, who take a principal part in the first of the fables.
xxviii
INTRODUCTION
which travellers would most easily become acquainted with, and we need not therefore be surprised to hear that a Jew, named Symeon Seth, about 1080 A.D., made the first translation into a European language, viz. into modern Greek. Another Jew, about 1250, made a translation of a slightly different recension of the Kalilah and Dimnah into Hebrew ; and a third, John of Capua, turned this Hebrew version into Latin between 1263 and 1278. At about the same time as the Hebrew version, another was made direct from the Arabic into Spanish, and a fifth into Latin ; and from these five versions translations were afterwards made into German, Italian, French, and English.
The title of the second Latin version just mentioned is very striking — it is ".ZEsop the Old". To the translator, Baldo, it evidently seemed quite in order to ascribe these new stories to the traditional teller of similar stories in ancient times ; just as witty sayings of more modern times have been collected into books ascribed to the once venerable Joe Miller. Baldo was neither sufficiently enlightened to consider a good story the worse for being an old one, nor sufficiently scrupulous to hesitate at giving his new book the advantage it would gain from its connexion with a well-known name.
Is it true, then, that the so-called ^sop's Fables — so popular still, in spite of many rivals, among our Western children — are merely adaptations from tales invented long ago to please and to instruct the child like people of the East ? I think I can give an answer, though not a complete answer, to the question, xxix
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
Msop himself is several times mentioned in classical literature, and always as the teller of stories or fables. Thus Plato says that Socrates in his imprisonment occupied himself by turning the stories (literally myths) of JEsop into verse : 1 Aristophanes four times refers to his tales : 2 and Aristotle quotes in one form a fable of his, which Lucian quotes in another.3 In accordance with these references, classical historians fix the date of ^Esop in the sixth century B.C. ; 4 but some modern critics, relying on the vagueness and inconsistency of the traditions, have denied his existence altogether. This is, perhaps, pushing scepticism too far ; but it may be admitted that he left no written works, and it is quite certain that if he did, they have been irretrievably lost.
Notwithstanding this, a learned monk of Constan tinople, named Planudes, and the author also of numerous other works, did not hesitate, in the first half of the fourteenth century, to write a work which he called a collection of Msop's Fables. This was first printed at Milan at the end of the fifteenth century ; and two other supplementary collections have subse-
1 Phcedo, p. 61. Comp. Bentley, Dissertation on the Fables of Mso<p, p. 136.
2 Vespce, 566, 1259, 1401 sqq. ; and Av&t, 651 sqq.
3 Arist., de part, anim., iii, 2 ; Lucian, Nigr., 32.
4 Herodotus (ii, 134) makes him contemporary with King Amasis of Egypt, the beginning of whose reign is placed in 569 B.C. ; Plutarch (Sept. Sap. Conv., 152) makes him contemporary with Solon, who is reputed to have been born in 638 B.C. ; and Diogenes Laertius (i, 72) says that he nourished about the fifty-second Olympiad, i.e. 572-69 B.C. Compare Clinton, Fast. Hell., i, 237 (under the year B.C. 572), and i, 239 (under B.C. 534).
XXX
INTRODUCTION
quently appeared.1 From these, and especially from the work of Planudes, all our so-called Msop's Fables are derived.
Whence then did Planudes and his fellow-labourers draw their tales ? This cannot be completely answered till the source of each one of them shall have been clearly found, and this has not yet been completely done. But Oriental and classical scholars have already traced a goodly number of them ; and the general results of their investigations may be shortly stated.
Babrius, a Greek poet, who probably lived in the first century before Christ, wrote in verse a number of fables, of which a few fragments were known in the Middle Ages.2 The complete work was fortunately discovered by Mynas in the year 1824, at Mount Athos ; and both Bentley and Tyrwhitt from the fragments, and Sir George Cornewall Lewis in his well-known edition of the whole work, have shown that several of Planudes' Fables are also to be found in Babrius.3
It is possible, also, that the ^Esopian fables of the Latin poet Phsedrus, who in the title of his work calls himself a freedman of Augustus, were known to
1 One at Heidelberg in 1610, and the other at Paris in 1810. There is a complete edition of all these fables, 231 in number, by T. Gl. Schneider, Breslau, 1812.
2 See the editions by De Furia, Florence, 1809 ; Schneider, in an appendix to his edition of JEsop's Fables, Breslau, 1812 ; Berger, Munchen, 1816; Knoch, Halle, 1835; and Lewis, Philolog. Museum, 1832, i, 280-304.
3 Bentley, loc. cit. ; Tyrwhitt, De Babrio, etc., Lond., 1776. The editions of the newly-found MS. are by Lachmann, 1 845 ; Orelli and Baiter, 1845; G. C. Lewis, 1846; and Schneidewin, 1853.
xxxi
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
Planudes. But the work of Phsedrus, which is based on that of Babrius, existed only in very rare MSS. till the end of the sixteenth century,1 and may therefore have easily escaped the notice of Planudes.
On the other hand, we have seen that versions of Buddhist Birth Stories, and other Indian tales, had appeared in Europe before the time of Planudes in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Spanish ; and many of his stories have been clearly traced back to this source.2 Further, as I shall presently show, some of the fables of Babrius and Phsedrus, found in Planudes, were possibly derived by those authors from Buddhist sources. And lastly, other versions of the Jatakas, besides those which have been mentioned as coming through the Arabs, had reached Europe long before the time of Planudes ; and some more of his stories have been traced back to Buddhist sources through these channels also.
What is at present known, then, with respect to the so-called Msop's Fables, amounts to this — that none of them are really ^Esopean at all ; that the collection was first formed in the Middle Ages ; that a large
1 It was first edited by Pithou, in 1596 ; also by Orelli, Zurich, 1831. Comp. Oesterley, Phcedrus und die J3sop. Fabel im Mittelalter.
2 By Silvestre de Sacy, in his edition of Kalilah and Dimnah, Paris, 1816 ; Loiseleur Deslongchamps, in his Essai sur Us Fables Indiennes, et sur leur Introd. en Europe, Paris, 1838 ; Prof. Benfey, in his edition of the Panca Tantra, Leipzig, 1859 ; Prof. Max Miiller, On the Migration of Fables, Contemporary Review, July, 1870; Prof. Weber, Ueber den Zusammenhang indischer Fabeln mit Griechischen, Indische Studien, iii, 337 sqq. ; Adolf Wagener, Essai sur les rapports entre les apologues de rinde et de la Grece, 1853 ; Otto Keller, Ueber die Geschichte der Grie- cliischen Fabeln, 1862.
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INTRODUCTION
number of them have been already traced back, in various ways, to our Buddhist Jataka Book ; and that almost the whole of them are probably derived in one way or another from Indian sources.
It is perhaps worthy of mention, as a fitting close to the history of the so-called Msop's Fables, that those of his stories which Planudes borrowed indirectly from India have at length been restored to their original home, and bid fair to be popular even in this much-altered form. For not only has an Englishman translated a few of them into several of the many languages spoken in the great continent of India,1 but Narayan Balkrishna Godpole, B.A., one of the Masters of the Government High School at Ahmad- nagar, has lately published a second edition of his translation into Sanskrit of the common English version of the successful spurious compilations of the old monk of Constantinople !
THE BAELAAM AND JOSAPHAT LITERATURE
A complete answer to the question with which the last digression started can only be given when each one of the two hundred and thirty-one fables of Planudes and his successors shall have been traced back to its original author. But — whatever that complete answer may be — the discoveries just pointed
1 J. Gilchrist, The Oriental Fabulist, or Polyglot Translations of dZsop's and other Ancient Fables from the English Language into Hindustani, Persian, Arabic, Bhakka, Bongla, Sanscrit, etc., in the Roman Character, Calcutta, 1803.
xxxiii
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
out are at least most strange and most instructive. And yet, if I mistake not, the history of the Jataka Book contains hidden amongst its details a fact more unexpected and more striking still.
In the eighth century the Khalif of Bagdad was that Almansur at whose court was written the Arabic book Kalilah and Dimnah, afterwards translated by the learned Jews I have mentioned into Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. A Christian, high in office at his court, after wards became a monk, and is well known, under the name of St. John of Damascus, as the author in Greek of many theological words in defence of the orthodox faith. Among these is a religious romance called Barlaam and Joasaph, giving the history of an Indian prince who was converted by Barlaam and became a hermit. This history, the reader will be surprised to learn, is taken from the life of the Buddha ; and Joasaph is merely the Buddha under another name, the word Joasaph, or Josaphat, being simply a corruption of the word Bodisat, that title of the future Buddha so constantly repeated in the Buddhist Birth Stories.1 Now a life of the Buddha forms the introduction to our Jataka Book, and St. John's romance also contains a number of fables and stories, most of which have been traced back to the same source.2
1 Joasaph is in Arabic written also Yudasatf ; and this, through a confusion between the Arabic letters Y and B, is for Bodisat. See, for the history of these changes, Reinaud, Memotre sur I'lnde, 1849, p. 91 ; quoted with approbation by Weber, Indische Streifen, iii, 57.
2 The Buddhist origin was first pointed out by Laboulaye in the Dtbats, July, 1859 ; and more fully by Liebrecht, in the Jafirbuch
XXXIV
INTRODUCTION
This book, the first religious romance published in a Western language, became very popular indeed, and, like the Arabic Kalilah and Dimnah, was trans lated into many other European languages. It exists in Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, German, English, Swedish, and Dutch. This will show how widely it was read, and how much its moral tone pleased the taste of the Middle Ages. It was also translated as early as 1204 into Icelandic, and has even been published in the Spanish dialect used in the Philippine Islands I
Now it was a very ancient custom among Christians to recite at the most sacred part of their most sacred service (in the so-called Canon of the Mass, im mediately before the consecration of the Host) the names of deceased saints and martyrs. Religious men of local celebrity were inserted for this purpose in local lists, called Diptychs, and names universally honoured throughout Christendom appeared in all such catalogues. The confessors and martyrs so honoured are now said to be canonized, that is, they have become enrolled among the number of Christian saints mentioned in the ' Canon ', whom it is the duty of every Catholic to revere, whose intercession may be invoked, who may be chosen as patron saints,
filr romanische und englische Liter atur, 1860. See also Littre, Journal des Savans, 1865, who fully discusses, and decides in favour of the romance being really the work of St. John of Damascus. I hope, in a future volume, to publish a complete analysis of St. John's work ; pointing out the resemblances between it and the Buddhist lives of Gotama, and giving parallel passages wherever the Greek adopts not only the Buddhist ideas, but also Buddhist expressions.
XXXV
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
and in whose honour images and altars and chapels may be set up.1
For a long time it was permitted to the local ecclesiastics to continue the custom of inserting such names in their ' Diptychs ', but about 1170 a decretal of Pope Alexander III confined the power of canoniza tion, as far as the Roman Catholics were concerned,2 to the Pope himself. From the different Diptychs various martyrologies, or lists of persons so to be commemorated in the * Canon ', were composed to supply the place of the merely local lists or Diptychs. For, as time went on, it began to be considered more and more improper to insert new names in so sacred a part of the Church prayers ; and the old names being well known, the Diptychs fell into disuse. The names in the Martyrologies were at last no longer inserted in the Canon, but are repeated in the service called the ' Prime ', though the term ' canonized ' was still used of the holy men mentioned in them. And when the increasing number of such Martyrologies threatened to lead to confusion, and to throw doubt on the exclusive power of the Popes to canonize, Pope Sixtus the Fifth (1585-90) authorized a particular Martyr ologium, drawn up by Cardinal Baronius, to be used throughout the Western Church. In that work are included not only the saints first
1 Pope Benedict XIV, in De servorum Dei beatificatione et beatorum canonisatione, lib. i, cap. 45 ; Regnier, De ecclesid Christi, in Migne's Theol. Curs. Com.pl., iv, 710.
2 Decret. Greg., lib. iii, tit. xlvi, confirmed and explained by decrees of Urban VIII (13th March, 1625, and 5th July, 1634) and of Alexander VII (1659).
xxxvi
INTRODUCTION
canonized at Rome, but all those who, having been already canonized elsewhere, were then acknowledged by the Pope and the College of Rites to be saints of the Catholic Church of Christ. Among such, under the date of the 27th November, are included ' The holy Saints Barlaam and Josaphat, of India, on the borders of Persia, whose wonderful acts Saint John of Damascus has described.' 1
Where and when they were first canonized, I have been unable, in spite of much investigation, to ascertain. Petrus de Natalibus, who was Bishop of Equilium, the modern Jesolo, near Venice, from 1370 to 1400, wrote a Martyr ology called Catalogus Sanctorum ; and in it, among the * saints ', he inserts both Barlaam and Josaphat, giving also a short account of them derived from the old Latin translation of St. John of Damascus.2 It is from this work that Baronius, the compiler of the authorized Martyrology now in use, took over the names of these two saints, Barlaam and Josaphat. But, so far as I have been able to ascertain, they do not occur in any martyr- ologies or lists of saints of the Western Church older than that of Petrus de Natalibus.3
1 p. 177 of the edition of 1873, bearing the official approval of Pope Pius IX, or p. 803 of the Cologne edition of 1610.
2 Cat. Sanct., Leyden ed. 1542, p. cliii.
3 The author added the following in his copy. They occur in the works of Usnard, a Benedictine, who wrote about 875 (published by Greven in 1515, and by Molanus in 1568). In the Month for 1881, p. 141, Father Coleridge, S.J., wrote that they occur in a Slavonic calendar of the 15th century, preserved in the Ecclesiastical Academy at Petrograd, and in several later Slavonic martyrologies, but not in the Menologium drawn up by Cardinal Girlet, from which the compilers of the Roman martyrology
xxxvii
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
In the corresponding manual of worship still used in the Greek Church, however, we find, under 26th August, the name ' of the holy losaph, son of Abener, king of India '-1 Barlaam is not mentioned, and is not therefore recognized as a saint in the Greek Church. No history is added to the simple statement I have quoted ; and I do not know on what authority it rests. But there is no doubt that it is in the East, and probably among the records of the ancient church of Syria, that a final solution of this question should be sought.2
Some of the more learned of the numerous writers who translated or composed new works on the basis of the story of Josaphat, have pointed out in their notes that he had been canonized ; 3 and the hero of the romance is usually called St. Josaphat in the titles of these works, as will be seen from the Table of the Josaphat literature below. But Professor Liebrecht, when identifying Josaphat with the Buddha, took no notice of this ; and it was Professor Max Miiller, who has done so much to infuse the glow of life into the dry bones of Oriental scholarship, who first pointed out the strange fact — almost incredible, were it not
drew their notices of the saints of the Greek church. This work was published shortly before theirs. Coleridge says, that there may have been such saints, and that the Buddhist story may have been added to theirs, or derived from it. — Editor.
1 p. 160 of the part for the month of August of the authorized Mrjvalov of the Greek Church, published at Constantinople, 1843 : " Tov oaiov '/cuao-a^, vlov 'Afievrjp rov jSaatAeaj? rfjs 'TvSt'a?."
2 For the information in the last three pages I am chiefly indebted to my father, the Rev. T. W. Davids, without whose generous aid I should not have attempted to touch this obscure and difficult question.
3 See, for instance, Billius, and the Italian Editor, of 1734.
xxxviii
INTRODUCTION
for the completeness of the proof — that Gotama the Buddha, under the name of St. Josaphat, is now officially recognized and honoured and worshipped throughout the whole of Catholic Christendom as a Christian saint !
I have now followed the Western history of the Buddhist Book of Birth Stories along two channels only. Space would fail me, and the reader's patience perhaps too, if I attempted to do more. But I may mention that the inquiry is not by any means exhausted. A learned Italian has proved that a good many of the stories of the hero known throughout Europe as Sinbad the Sailor are derived from the same inexhaustible treasury of stories, witty and wise ; 1 and a similar remark applies also to other well- known Tales included in the Arabian Nights.2 La Fontaine, whose charming versions of the Fables are so deservedly admired, openly acknowledges his indebtedness to the French versions of Kalilah and Dimnah ; and Professor Benfey and others have traced the same stories, or ideas drawn from them, to Poggio, Boccaccio, Gower, Chaucer, Spenser, and many other later writers. Thus, for instance, the three caskets and the pound of flesh in The Merchant of Venice} and the precious jewel which in As you Like It the venomous toad wears in his head,3 are derived
1 Comparetti, Eicerche intorne al Libra di Sindibad, Milano, 1869. Compare Landsberger, Die Fabeln des Sophos, Posen, 1859.
2 See Benfey, PantscTia Tantra, vol. i, Introduction, passim.
3 Act ii, so. 1. Prof. Benfey, in his Pantscha Tantra, i, 213-20, has traced this idea far and wide. Dr. Dennys, in his Folklore of China, gives the Chinese Buddhist version of it.
xxxix
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
from the Buddhist tales. In a similar way it has been shown that tales current among the Hungarians and the numerous peoples of Slavonic race have been derived from Buddhist sources, through translations made by or for the Huns, who penetrated in the time of Genghis Khan into the East of Europe.1 And finally yet other Indian tales, not included in the Kalilag and Damnag literature, have been brought into the opposite corner of Europe, by the Arabs of Spain.2
There is only one other point on which a few words should be said. I have purposely chosen as specimens one Buddhist Birth Story similar to the Judgment of Solomon ; two which are found also in Babrius ; and one which is found also in Phaedrus. How are these similarities, on which the later history of Indian Fables throws no light, to be explained ?
As regards the cases of Babrius and Phaedrus, it can only be said that the Greeks who travelled with Alexander to India may have taken the tales there,
1 See Benfey's Introduction to Panca Tantra, §§ 36, 397, 1, 92, 166, 186. Ralston's translation of Tibetan stories throws further light on this, at present, rather obscure subject.
2 See for example Jat. i, No. 30 : Munika- Jataka. Benfey (Panca Tantra, p. 228 f.) has traced stories somewhat analogous throughout European literature, but the Jataka itself is, he says, found almost word for word in an unpublished Hebrew book by Berachia ben Natronai, only that two donkeys take the place of the two oxen. Berachia lived in the 12th-13th century, in Provence.
The story of the monkey and his heart, in Jataka ii, No. 208, occurs in a Japanese version given in Andrew Lang's Violet Fairy Book, p. 275, ' The Monkey and the Jellyfish,' sea and liver replacing Ganges and heart. — Editor.
' xl
INTRODUCTION
but they may equally well have brought them back. We only know that at the end of the fourth, and still more in the third century before Christ, there was constant travelling to and fro between the Greek dominions in the East and the adjoining parts of India, which were then Buddhist, and that the Birth Stories were already popular among the Buddhists in Afghanistan, where the Greeks remained for a long time. Indeed, the very region which became the seat of the Groeco-Bactrian kings takes, in all the Northern versions of the Birth Stories, the place occupied by the country of Kasi in the Pali text — so that the scene of the tales is laid in that district. And among the innumerable Buddhist remains still existing there, a large number are connected with the Birth Stories.1 It is also in this very district, and under the im mediate successor of Alexander, that the original of the Kalilah and Dimnah was said by its Arabian translators to have been written by Bidpai. It is possible that a smaller number of similar stories were also current among the Greeks ; and that they not only heard the Buddhist ones, but told their own. But so far as the Greek and the Buddhist stories can at present be compared, it seems to me that the internal evidence is in favour of the Buddhist versions being the originals from which the Greek versions were adapted. Whether more than this can be at present said is very doubtful : when the Jatakas are
1 The legend of Sumedha's self-abnegation (see below, p. 93) is laid near Jelalabad ; and Mr. William Simpson has discovered on the spot two bas-reliefs representing the principal incident in the legend.
xli
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
all published, and the similarities between them and classical stories shall have been fully investigated, the contents of the stories may enable criticism to reach a more definite conclusion.
The case of Solomon's judgment is somewhat different. If there were only one fable in Babrius or Phsedrus identical with a Buddhist Birth Story, we should suppose merely that the same idea had occurred to two different minds : and there would thus be no necessity to postulate any historical connexion. Now the similarity of the two judgments stands, as far as I know, in complete isolation ; and the story is not so curious but that two writers may have hit upon the same idea. At the same time it is just possible that when the Jews were in Babylon they may have told, or heard, the story.
Had we met with this story in a book unquestion ably later than the Exile, we might suppose that they heard the story there ; that some one repeating it has ascribed the judgment to King Solomon, whose great wisdom was a common tradition among them ; and that it had thus been included in their history of that king. But we find it in the Book of Kings, which is usually assigned to the time of Jeremiah, who died during the Exile ; and it should be remembered that the chronicle in question was based for the most part on traditions current much earlier among the Jewish people, and probably on earlier documents.
If, on the other hand, they told it there, we may expect to find some evidence of the fact in the details of the story as preserved in the Buddhist story-books xlii
INTRODUCTION
current in the North of India, and more especially in the Buddhist countries bordering on Persia. Now Dr. Dennys, in his Folk-lore of China, has given us a Chinese Buddhist version of a similar judgment, which is most probably derived from a Northern Buddhist Sanskrit original ; and though this version is very late, and differs so much in its details from those of both the Pali and Hebrew tales that it affords no basis itself for argument, it yet holds out the hope that we may discover further evidence of a decisive character. This hope is confirmed by the occurrence of a similar tale in the Gesta Romanorum, a medieval work which quotes Barlaam and Josaphat, and is otherwise largely indebted in an indirect way to Buddhist sources.1 It is true that the basis of the judgment in that story is not the love of a mother to her son, but the love of a son to his father. But that very difference is encouraging. The orthodox com pilers of the ' Gests of the Romans '2 dared not have so twisted the sacred record. They could not therefore have taken it from our Bible. Like all their other tales, however, this one was borrowed from some where ; and its history, when discovered, may be expected to throw some light on this inquiry.
I should perhaps point out another way in which this tale may possibly be supposed to have wandered
1 No. xlv, p. 80, of Swan and Hooper's popular edition ; no. xlii, p. 167, of the critical edition published for the Early English Text Society in 1879 by S. J. H. Heritage, who has added a valuable historical note at p. 477.
2 This adaptation of the Latin title is worthy of notice. It of course means " Deeds " ; but, as most of the stories are more or less humorous, the word Gest, now spelt Jest, acquired its present meaning.
xliii
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
from the Jews to the Buddhists, or from India to the Jews. The land of Ophir was probably in India. The Hebrew names of the apes and peacocks said to have been brought thence by Solomon's coasting-vessels are merely corruptions of Indian names ; and Ophir must therefore have been either an Indian port (and if so, almost certainly at the mouth of the Indus, afterwards a Buddhist country) or an entrepot, further west, for Indian trade. But the very gist of the account of Solomon's expedition by sea is its unprecedented and hazardous character ; it would have been impossible even for him without the aid of Phoenician sailors ; and it was not renewed by the Hebrews till after the time when the account of the judgment was recorded in the Book of Kings. Any intercourse between his servants and the people of Ophir must, from the difference of language, have been of the most meagre extent ; and we may safely conclude that it was not the means of the migration of our tale. It is much more likely, if the Jews heard or told the Indian story at all, and before the time of the captivity, that the way of communication was overland. There is every reason to believe that there was a great and continual commercial intercourse between East and West from very early times by way of Palmyra and Mesopotamia. Though the inter course by sea was not continued after Solomon's time, gold of Ophir,1 ivory, jade, and Eastern gems still found their way to the West ; and it would be an interesting task for an Assyrian or Hebrew scholar to
1 Psalm, xiv, 9 ; Isaiah xiii, 12 ; Job xxii, 24, xxviii, 16. xliv
INTRODUCTION
trace the evidence of this ancient overland route in other ways.
SUMMARY
To sum up what can at present be said on the con nexion between the Indian tales, preserved to us in the Book of Buddhist Birth Stories, and their counter parts in the West :
1. In a few isolated passages of Greek and other writers, earlier than the invasion of India by Alexander the Great, there are references to a legendary ^Esop, and perhaps also allusions to stories like some of the Buddhist ones.
2. After Alexander's time a number of tales also found in the Buddhist collection became current in Greece, and are preserved in the poetical versions of Babrius and Phsedrus. They are probably of Buddhist origin.
3. From the time of Babrius to the time of the first Crusade no migration of Indian tales to Europe can be proved to have taken place. About the latter time a translation into Arabic of a Persian work containing tales found in the Buddhist book was translated by Jews into Greek, Hebrew, and Latin. Translations of these versions afterwards appeared in all the principal languages of Europe.
4. In the eleventh or twelfth century a translation was made into Latin of the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat, a Greek romance written in the eighth century by St. John of Damascus on the basis of the Buddhist Jataka book. Translations, poems, and
xlv
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
plays founded on this work were rapidly produced throughout Western Europe.
5. Other Buddhist stories not included in either of the works mentioned in the two last paragraphs were introduced into Europe both during the Crusades and also during the dominion of the Arabs in Spain.
6. Versions of other Buddhist stories were intro duced into Eastern Europe by the Huns under Genghis Khan.
7. The fables and stories introduced through these various channels became very popular during the Middle Ages, and were used as the subjects of numerous sermons, story-books, romances, poems, and edifying dramas. Thus extensively adopted and circulated, they had a considerable influence on the revival of literature, which, hand in hand with the revival of learning, did so much to render possible and to bring about the Great Reformation. The character of the hero of them — the Buddha, in his last or in one or other of his supposed previous births — appealed so strongly to the sympathies, and was so attractive to the minds of medieval Christians, that he became, and has ever since remained, an object of Christian worship. And a collection of these and similar stories — wrongly, but very naturally, ascribed to a famous story-teller of the ancient Greeks — has become the common property, the house hold literature, of all the nations of Europe ; and, under the name of JEsop's Fables, has handed down, as a first moral lesson-book and as a continual feast for our children in the West, tales first invented to please and to instruct our far-off cousins in the distant East.
xlvi
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 consider able 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 Jataka 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 Brahmanical 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, xlvii
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
On the other hand, there ivS every reason to hope that in the older portions of the Buddhist Scriptures a considerable number of the tales also included in the Jdtaka Book will be found in identical or similar forms ; for even in the few fragments of the Pitakas as yet studied, several Birth Stories have already been discovered.1 These occur in isolated passages, and, except the story of King Maha Sudassana and that in Anguttara, i, p. Ill, have not as yet become Jatakas — 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 Pali Pitakas consists entirely of real Jataka stories, all of which are found in our Collection.
The title of this work is Cariyd-pitaka ; and it is constructed to show when, and in what births, Grotama had acquired the Ten Great Perfections (Generosity, Goodness, Kenunciation, Wisdom, Firm ness, Patience, Truth, Resolution, Kindness, and
1 Thus, for instance, the Marii Kantha Jdtaka (Fausboll, no. 253) is taken from a story which is in both the Pali and the Chinese versions of the Vinaya Pitaka (Oldenberg, p. xlvi) ; the Tittira Jdtaka (Fausboll, no. '37, translated below) occurs almost word for word in the Culla Vagga (vi, 6, 3-5) ; the Khandhavatta Jdtaka (Fausboll, no. 203) is a slightly enlarged version of Culla Vagga, v. 6 ; the Sukhavihdri Jdtaka (Fausboll, no. 10, trans lated below) is founded on a story in the Culla Vagga (vii, 1, 4-6) ; the Mahd-sudassana Jdtaka (Fausboll, no. 95) is derived from the Sutta of the same name in the Digha Nikdya (translated by me in ' Sacred Books of the East ', vol. xi) ; the Makhd Deva Jdtaka (Fausboll, no. 9, translated below) from the Sutta of the same name in the Majjhima Nikdya (no. 83) ; and the Sakunagghi Jdtaka (Fausboll, no. 168) from a parable in the Satipatthdna Vagga of the Sanyutta Nikaya.
Compare the writer's Buddhist India, ch. xi, Lond. 1903, for an enlarged restatement of the views here briefly put forward.
xlviii
INTRODUCTION
Equanimity), without which he could not have become a Buddha. In striking analogy with the modern view, that true growth in moral and intel lectual 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 con secutive lives.1
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 Asvagosha began to write a work giving ten Births for each of the Ten Perfections, but died when he had versified only thirty-four.2 Now there is a Sanskrit work called Jataka Mala, as yet unpublished,3 but of which there are several MSS. in Paris and in London, consisting
1 See on this belief below, pp. 141-4, where the verses 259-69 are quotations from the Chariya-Pitaka.
2 Taranatha's Geschichte des Buddhismus (a Tibetan work of the eighteenth century, translated into German by Schiefner), p. 92.
3 Since edited by E. Kern, Harvard Or. Series, i, 1891. Translation by J. S. Speyer, 8. Bks. of the Buddhists, i, 1895.— Ed.
xlix
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
of thirty-five Birth Stories in mixed prose and verse, in illustration of the Ten Perfections.1 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 Jatakas comprised in the Chariya Pitaka and in the Jataka Mala.2
There is yet another work in the Pali Pitakas which constantly refers to the Jataka theory. The BUDDHA VAMSA,3 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 Pali Introduction to our Jataka Book is based, and most of the verses in the first fifty pages of the present translation are quotations from the Buddha vamsa. From this source we thus have authority for twenty-four Birth Stories, corresponding to the last twenty-four of the twenty-seven previous Buddhas,4 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 Jataka Book can thus be traced back to the earlier Pali Buddhist literature ; and it would be out of place to enter here upon any
1 Fausboll's Five Jatakas, pp. 58-68, where the full text of one Jataka is given and Leon Feer, Etude sur les Jatakas, p. 57.
2 See p. 53.
3 The Pali Text Society published an edition by Rd. Morris, 1882.— Ed.
4 See the list of the Buddhas below, p. 138, where it will be seen that for the first three Buddhas we have no Birth Story.
1
INTRODUCTION
lengthy discussion of the difficult question as to the date of those earlier records. The provisional con clusions 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 Mahd 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 Jdtaka Book itself, but are also referred to in these other parts of the Pali Pitakas, are at least older than the Council of Vesali.1
The Council of Vesali 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 ; 2 and in the tradi tion 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 Vesali at within thirty years of 350 B.C.
1 This will hold good though the Buddhavarjisa and the Chariya Pitaka should turn out to be later than most of the other books contained in the Three Pali Pitakas. That the stories they contain have already become Jatakas, whereas in most of the other cases above quoted the stories are still only parables, would seem to lead to this conclusion ; and the fact that they have preserved some very ancient forms (such as locatives in i) may merely be due to the fact that they are older, not in matter and ideas, but only in form. Compare what is said below as to the verses in the Birth Stories.
2 The question is discussed at length in my Ancient Coins and Measures of Ceylon in Numismata Orientalia, vol. i.
li
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
The members of the Buddhist Order of Mendicant Monks 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 the^.r own, called, from the numbers of those who attended it, the Great Council.
Now the oldest Ceylon Chronicle, the Dipavamsa, which contains the only account as yet published of what occurred at the Great Council, says as follows : l " 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
Nikayas. Those monks — knowing not what had been spoken at
length, and what concisely, What was the obvious, and what was the higher
meaning —
1 Dipavamsa, v, 32 sqq.
lii
INTRODUCTION
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 Pariwara abstract, and the Six Books of Abhi-
dhamma ; The Patisambhida, the Niddesa, and a portion of the
Jdtaka — So much they put aside, and made others in their
place ! " . . .
The animus of this description is sufficiently evident ; and the Dlpavanisa. 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 that, according to Ceylon tradition, a book called the Jataka existed at the time of the Councils of Vesali.
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.1 Mean-
1 There are several works enumerated by Beal in his Catalogue of Chinese Buddhistic Works in the India Office Library (see especially pp. 93-7, and pp. 107-9), from which we might expect to derive this information.
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
while 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 Pali Pitakas, but also by ancient monuments.
Among the most interesting and important dis coveries which we owe to recent archaeological researches in India must undoubtedly be reckoned those of the Buddhist carvings on the railings round the dome-shaped relic shrines of Sanchi, Amaravati, 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 Jataka 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 Jatakas 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 Jataka stories that these ancient bas-reliefs afford indis putable evidence that the Birth Stories were already, liv
INTRODUCTION
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 " Jatakas ". A detailed state ment of all the Jatakas 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 Jdtaka Book in the Pali Pitakas. This would seeem, 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 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 Jataka Book itself very great uncertainty as to the names — the same stories being called in different parts of the Book by different titles1
1 Thus no. 41 is called both Losaka Jdtaka and Mitta-vindaka Jataka (Feer, Etude sur les Jatakas, p. 121) ; no. 439 is called Catudvdra Jataka and also Mitta-vindaka Jataka (ibid. p. 120) ; no. 57 is called Vdnarinda Jataka and also Kumbldla Jataka (Fausboll, vol. i, p. 278, and vol. ii, p. 206) ; no. 96 is called Telapatta Jdtaka and also Takkasild Jdtaka (ibid. vol. i, p. 393, and vol. i, pp. 469, 470) ; no. 102, there called Pat,rtika Jdtaka, is the same story as no. 217, there called Seggu Jdtaka ; no. 30,
Iv
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
—but one of these very bas-reliefs has actually inscribed over it two distinct names in full ! l
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 Jataka ", or " The Jackal Jataka ", or even " The Good Character Jataka " ; 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 Jataka " as " The Tortoise Jataka ", 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 Jataka 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 Dlpavamsa tradition. The Buddhist Scriptures are
there called Munika Jataka, is the same story as no. 286, there called Sdluka Jataka; no. 215, the Kacchapa Jataka, is called Bahu-Bhani Jataka in the Dhammapada (p. 419) ; and no. 157 is called Guna Jataka, Siha Jataka, and Sigala Jataka.
1 Cunningham, The Stupa of Bharhut, pi. xlvii. The carving illustrates a fable of a cat and a cock, and is labelled both Bidala Jataka and Kukkuta Jataka (Cat and Cock Jataka, no. 383).
Ivi
INTRODUCTION
sometimes spoken of as consisting of nine different divisions, or sorts of texts (Angdni), of which the seventh is JdtaJcas, or The Jdtaka Collection (Jdtakam). This division of the Sacred Books is mentioned, not only in the Dipavamsa itself, and in the Sumangala Vildsim, but also in the Anguttara Nikdya (one of the later works included in the Pali Pitakas), and in the Saddharma Pundarika (a late, but standard Sanskrit work of the Northern Buddhists).1 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 Vesali itself. In any case it is conclusive as to the existence of a collection of Jatakas at a very early date.
The text of the Jdtaka 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 Explana tion 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 Jdtaka Book, its full title is The Commentary on the Jatakas.
1 See the authorities quoted in my manual, Buddhism, pp. 214, 215 ; and Dr. Morris, in The Academy for May, 1880.
Ivii
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
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, p. 81) contains all our present information on these points. Childers, who is the translator of this passage (below, p. Ixxix), has elsewhere ascribed the work to Buddhaghosa x ; but I venture to think that this is, to say the least, very uncertain.
We have, in the thirty-seventh chapter of the Mahavamsa,2 a perhaps almost contemporaneous account of Buddhaghosa's literary work ; and it is there distinctly stated, that after writing in India the Atihasalirii (a commentary on the Dhammasangam, the first of the Six Books of the Abhidhamma PilaJca), he went to Ceylon (about 430 A.D.) with the express intention of translating the Singhalese commentaries into Pali. There he studied under the Thera San- ghapali, and having proved his efficiency by his great work The Path of Purity (Visuddhi-Magga, a com pendium of doctrine), 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 Singhalese Com mentary " into Pali. But it by no means follows, as has been too generally supposed, that he was the author of all the Pali Commentaries we now possess. He translated, it may be granted, the Commentaries on the Vinaya PitaJca and on the four great divisions (Nikayas) of the Sutta Pitaka ; but these works,
1 In his Pali Dictionary, Preface, p. ix, note.
2 Tumour, pp. 250-3.
Iviii
INTRODUCTION
together with those mentioned above, would amply justify the very general expression of the chronicler. The Singhalese Commentary being now lost, it is impossible to say what books were and what were not included under that expression as used in the Mahdvamsa ; and to assign any Pali 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 Jataka Commentary, leaving the works I have men tioned — 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 Jataka Commentary as translated below, and to judge for himself whether they could possibly be such words as Buddhaghosa would probably, under the circum stances, 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 Kevata, Buddhaghosa's teacher in India, nor the name of Sanghapali, 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
lix
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
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 Mahdvamsa,'ih&t before he came to Ceylon, the Singhalese commentaries had not been turned into Pali ; 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 Mahdvamsa itself, which would confirm this supposi tion ; 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 Pali work is not a translation of the Sin ghalese Commentary. The author three times refers to a previous Jdtaka Commentary, which possibly formed part of the Singhalese wrork, as a separate book ; l and in one case mentions what it says only to overrule it.2 Our Pali 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 MadJmra-attha-vildsim, the Commentary on the Buddhavamsa mentioned above, which is not usually ascribed to Buddhaghosa.3
1 Fausboll, vol. i, p. 62 and p. 488 ; vol. ii, p. 224.
2 See the translation below.
3 I judge from Tumour's analysis of that work in the Journal of the Bengal Asiatic Society, 1839, where some long extracts have been translated and the contents of other passages given in abstract.
Ix
INTRODUCTION
The Jdtaka Book is not the only Pali 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 Dhammapada or Collection of Scripture Verses, contains a considerable number of them. Mr. Fausboll 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 Captian Kogers, entitled Buddhaghosa' s Parables — a translation from a Burmese book called Dhamma- pada-vatthu (that is " Stories connected with the Dhammapada ") — consists almost entirely of Jataka
In Siam there is even a rival collection of Birth Stories which is called Panndsa-Jdtakan (The Fifty Jdtakas), and of which an account has been given us by Leon Feer ; l and the same scholar has pointed out that isolated stories, not contained in our collec tion, are also to be found in the Pali literature of that country.2 The first hundred and fifty tales in our collection are divided into three Panndsas, or fifties ; 3 but the Siamese collection cannot be either of these,
1 Etude sur les Jdtakas, pp. 62-5.
2 Ibid., pp. 66-71.
3 This is clear from vol. i, p. 410 of Fausboll's text, where, at the end of the 100th tale, we find the words Majjhima-pannasako nitthito, that is " End of the Middle Fifty ". At the end of the 60th tale (p. 261) there is a corresponding entry, Pathamo panndso, " First Fifty " ; and though there is no such entry at the end of the 150th tale, the expression " Middle Fifty " shows that there must have been, at one time, such a division as is above stated.
Ixi
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
as M. Feer has ascertained that it contains no tales beginning in the same way as any of those in either of these " 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 Mahci Bharata, the great Hindu epic which became the storehouse of Indian myth ology, philosophy, and folk-lore. Unfortunately the date of the final arrangement of the Mahci Bharata is extremely uncertain, and there is no further evidence of the continued existence of the Jataka 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 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 story-book x : —
" 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,2 with a certainty beyond doubt, to have been originally a Buddhist book. This followed especially from the chapter discussed in § 225. But it was
1 Pantscha Tantra, Theodor Benfey, Leipzig, 1859, p. xi.
2 That is, in the course of Benfey's researches.
Ixii
INTRODUCTION
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 1840,1 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 expres sion 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,' 2 the autonomy of man's Intellect
1 In Ersch und Gruber's Encyklopcedie, especially at pp. 255 and 277.
2 Wassiliew, Der BuddMsmus, p. 68.
Ixiii
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
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 Keason 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."
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.1 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 distinc- tion'ssake, the Pancha Tantra (The Five Books). When this occurred it is impossible to say. But it was certainly the older and larger collection, not the present
1 Compare the title of the Birth Story above, p. xxii : "A Lesson for Kings ".
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INTRODUCTION
Pancha Tantra, which travelled into Persia, and became the source of the whole of the extensive Kalilag and Damnag literature.1
The Arabian authors of the work translated (through the ancient Persian) from this older collec tion 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.2 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 Jataka 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
1 See above.
2 Knatchbull, p. 29.
Ixv
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
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 Kathd-Sarit-Sagara (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 encyclopedic collection ; and the absence from the Kathd-Sarit-Sdgara 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 . Ixvi
INTRODUCTION
Somadeva derived his knowledge of the three books he does not give from the Vrihat-Kathd, a work ascribed to Gunadhya, written in the Paisachi dialect, and probably at least as early as the sixth century.1 This work, on which Somadeva's whole poem is based, is lost. But Dr. Biihler has lately discovered another Sanskrit poem, based on that earlier work, written in Kashmir by Kshemendra at the end of the eleventh century, and called, like its original, Vrihat-Kathd ; 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 Vrihat-Kathd.2
I should also mention here that another well-known work, the Vetdla-Panca-Vimsati (The Twenty-five Tales of a Demon), is contained in both the Sanskrit poems, and was therefore probably also in Gunadhya's collection ; but as no Jataka stories have been as yet traced in it, I have simply included it for purposes of reference in Appendix, Table I, together with the most important of those of the later Indian story books of which anything 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 Jataka Book.
Each story is introduced by another explaining where and why it was told by the Buddha ; the Birth
1 Dr. Fitz-Eclward Hall's Vdsavadatta, pp. 22-4.
* Dr. Biihler in The Indian Antiquary, i, 302 ; v, 29 ; vi, 269.
Lxvii
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
Story itself being called the Atita-vatthu (Story of the Past) and the Introductory Story the Paccuppanna- vatthu (Story of the Present). There is another book in the Pali Pitakas called Apaddna, which consists of tales about the lives of certain early Buddhists ; and many of the Introductory Stories in the Jdtaka Book (such, for instance, as the tale about Little Roadling, no. 4, or the tale about Kumara Kassapa, no. 12) differ very little from these Apaddnas. Other of the Introductory Stories (such, for instance, as no. 17) 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 ; 1 the closely- allied story given below as the Introduction to Birth Story no. 30 appears also as the Introduction to at least four others : 2 and there are many other instances of a similar kind.3
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 Intro-
1 Nos. 61-3, 147, 159, 193, 196, 198-9, 263.
2 Nos. 106, 145, 191, 286.
8 Nos. 58, 73, 142, 194, 220,and 277, have the same Introductory Story.
And so nos. 60, 104, 116, 161. And nos. 127-8, 138, 173, 175.
Ixviii
INTRODUCTION
ductory Story ; but it should be noticed that in one or two cases characters mentioned in the Atlta- vatthu are supposed not to have been reborn on earth at the time of the Paccuppanna-vatthu.1 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 transmigra tion of souls. Its doctrine (which is somewhat intricate, and for a fuller statement of which I must refer to my Manual of Buddhism 2) 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
1 See the " Pali note " at the end of Jataka no. 91.
2 pp. 99-106.
Ixix
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
this result is concentrated in some new individual is due to the older theory of soul.
In the case of one Jataka (Fausboll, 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-gdthd, 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 Atlta-vatthu or in the Conclusion, and sometimes in both. The number of cases in which all the verses are Abhisambuddha- odthd is relatively small (being only one in ten of the Jatakas published 1) ; and the number of cases in which they occur together with verses in the Atlta- vatthu is very small indeed (being only five out of the three hundred Jatakas published 2) ; 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 Jataka Book consisted of the verses alone ; that the Birth Stories
1 Nos. 1-5, 23-9, 37, 55-6, 68, 85, 87-8, 97, 100, 114, 136, (total, eighteen in the Eka-Nipata) ; 156 (=55-6), 196, 202, 237 ( =63), 241 (total, five in the Duka-Nipdta) ; 255-6, 258, 264, 284, 291, 300 (total, seven in the Tika-Nipata, and thirty altogether).
2 Nos. 152, 163, 179, 233, 286.
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INTRODUCTION
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.1 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 previous 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 anyone 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 Pali Pitakas 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
1 This belief underlies the curious note forming the last words of the Mahasupina Jataka, i, 345 : " Those who held the Council after the death of the Blessed One placed the lines beginning usabha rukkhd in the Commentary, and then, making the other lines beginning labuni into one verse, they put (the Jataka) into the Eka-Nipata (the chapter including all those Jatakas which have only one verse)."
Ixxi
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
Stories, though probably originally older than the verses they contain, were handed down in Ceylon till the time of the compilation of our present Jdtaka Book in the Singhalese language ; whilst the verses on the other hand were not translated, but were preserved as they were received, in Pali.
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 ruJckha-devatd — the fairy or genius of a tree.1 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 classi fied, not according to their contents, but according to the number of verses they contain. Thus, the First division (Nipata) 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
1 See, for instance, below, pp. 212, 228, 230, 317 ; above, p. xii ; and Jataka, no. 113.
Ixxii
INTRODUCTION
four ; and the whole of the five hundred and fifty Jatakas being contained in the twenty-two Nipatas. 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 Jatakas are only mentioned in the first two Nipatas to say that they will be found in the later ones ; 1 and several Jatakas given with one verse only in the First Nipata are given again with more verses in those that follow ; 2 and occasionally a story is even repeated, with but little variation, in the same Nipata.3
On the other hand, several Jatakas, which count only as one story in the present enumeration, really contain several different tales or fables. Thus, for instance, the Kuldvaka JdtaJca (On Mercy to Animals) consists of several stories woven, not very closely, into one. The most striking instance of this is the Ummagga Jataka , of which the Singhalese translation by the learned
1 Nos. 110-12, 170, 192 in the Ummagga Jataka, and no. 264 in the Suruci Jataka.
No. 30 -No. 286. No. 68=No. 237.
„ 34= „ 216. „ 86= „ 290.
„ 46= „ 268. „ 102= „ 217.
„ 57= „ 224. „ 145= „ 198.
So No. 82=No. 104. „ 99= „ 101. „ 134= „ 135. „ 195= „ 225. „ 294= „ 295. Compare the two stories nos. 23 and 24 translated below.
Ixxiii
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
Batuwan Tudawa 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 Jatakas ", 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 Kuldvaka Jdtaka, 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 Jatakas mentioned in note 1, p. Ixxiii, represents a distinct birth at all — the Bodisat is in them the same person as he is in the later Jatakas 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 Jdlaka 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 Ixxiv
INTRODUCTION
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 " Jatakas", 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 Bharhut ; 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 Jatakas 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 JdtaJca Book at the Councils of Vesali ; and secondly by the mention of a Jdtaka Book in the ninefold division of the Scriptures found in the Anguttara Nikdya and in the Saddharma Pundarika. 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 Jatakas, among which
may certainly be included those found in the Pali
Pitakas, there may well have been a tradition, more
or less reliable, as to the time and the occasion at
Ixxv
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
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 mediaeval Legends of the Saints than with such simple stories as dZsop's Fables, which still bear a likeness to their forefathers, the Stories of the Past.
The Jatakas so constituted were carried to Ceylon in the Pali language, when Buddhism was first intro duced into that island (a date that is not quite certain, but may be taken provisionally as about 250 B.C.) ; and the whole was there translated into and preserved in the Singhalese language (except the verses, which were left untranslated) until the compilation in the fifth century A.D., and by an unknown author, of the Pali Jdtaka 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 Pali Suttas are Ixxvi
INTRODUCTION
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 Jatakas 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 Jatakas 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 under lies 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 Ixxvii
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
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 Jataka 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 Pischel and Lubbock and Spencer have shown us that this is the means by which 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 in sufficiency 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 con veyed 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 mis leading ; and it reaches us only after nitration through a European mind more or less able to comprehend it rightly.
But in the Jatakas we have a nearly complete Ixxviii
INTRODUCTION
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 Jatakas as amusing stories may pass away. How can it stand against the rival claims of the fairy tales of science, and the entrancing, many-sided story of man's gradual rise and progress ? But though these less fabulous and more attractive stories will increasingly engage the attention of ourselves and of our children, we may still turn with appreciation to the ancient Book of the Buddhist Jdtaka 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. Kobert Childers, whose premature death was so great a blow to Pali studies, and whose name I never think of without a feeling of reverent and grateful regret, had undertaken the translation of the Jatakas, 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. The Rev. J. 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 Ixxix
BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
meet with, are above all due to Victor Fausboll, without whose editio princeps of the Pali text, the result of self-denying labours spread over many years, this translation would not have been under taken.
T. W. RHYS DAVIDS.
3, BRICK COUKT, TEMPLE. t, 1878.
Ixxx
THE STORY OF THE LINEAGE
The Nidanakatha
[vv. 1-11] The Apannaka and other Births, which in times gone by were recounted on various occasions by the great illustrious Sage, and in which during a long period our Teacher and Leader, desirous of the salvation of mankind, fulfilled the vast conditions of Buddhahood,1 were all collected together and added to the canon of Scripture by those who made the recension of the Scriptures, and rehearsed by them under the name of THE JATAKA. Having bowed at the feet of the Great Sage, the lord of the world, by whom in innumerable existences 2 boundless benefits were conferred upon mankind, and having paid reverence to the Doctrine, and ascribed honour to the Order, the receptacle of all honour ; and having removed all dangers by the efficacy of that meritorious act of veneration and honour referring to the Three Gems, I proceed to recite a Commentary upon this Jataka, illustrating as it does the infinite efficacy of the actions of great men — a commentary based upon the method of exposition current among the inmates of the Great Monastery. And I do so at the personal request of the elder Atthadassin, who lives apart from the world and ever dwells with his fraternity, and who desires the perpetuation of this chronicle of Buddha ; and likewise of Buddhamitta the tranquil
1 Lit. perfected the vast constituents of Buddhahood, the Paramitas are meant. The Apannaka is the title of the first Jataka.
2 Lit. in thousands of kotis of births (a koti is ten millions).
82 BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
and wise, sprung from the race of Mahimsasaka, skilled in the canons of interpretation ; and more over of the monk Buddhadeva of clear intellect. May all good men lend me their favourable attention while I speak ! l
Inasmuch as this comment on the Jataka, if it be expounded after setting forth the three Epochs, the distant, the intermediate, and proximate, will be clearly understood by those who hear it because they will have understood it from the beginning, therefore I will expound it after setting forth the three Epochs. Accordingly from the very outset it will be well to determine the limits of these Epochs. Now the narrative of the Bodhisatta's existence, from the time that at the feet of Dipankara he formed a resolu tion to become a Buddha to his rebirth in the Tusita heaven after leaving his life as Vessantara, is called the Distant Epoch. From his leaving the Tusita heaven to his attainment of omniscience on the Bo-tree seat, the narrative is called the Intermediate Epoch. And the Proximate Epoch is to be found in the various places in which he sojourned (during his ministry on earth). The following is
I: THE DISTANT EPOCH
Dureniddna
Tradition tells us that four asankheyyas 2 and a hundred thousand cycles ago there was a city called Amaravati. In this city there dwelt a brahmin named Sumedha, of good family on both sides, on the
1 The above lines in the original are in verse. I have found it impossible to follow the arrangement of the stanzas, owing to the extreme involution of the style.
2 An asankheyya is a period of vast duration, lit. an incalculable.
THE STORY OF THE LINEAGE 83
father's and the mother's side, of pure conception for seven generations back, by birth unreproached and respected, a man comely, well-favoured and amiable, and endowed with remarkable beauty. He followed his brahminical studies without engaging in any other pursuit. His parents died while he was still young. A minister of state, who acted as steward of his property, bringing forth the roll-book of his estate, threw open the stores filled with gold and silver, gems and pearls, and other valuables, and said : " So much, young man, belonged to your mother, so much to your father, so much to your grandparents and great- grandparents," and pointing out to him the property inherited through seven generations, he bade him guard it carefully. The wise Sumedha thought to himself : " After amassing all this wealth my parents and ancestors when they went to another world took not a farthing with them. Can it be right that I should make it an object to take my wealth with me when I go ? " And informing the king of his intention, he caused proclamation to be made x in the city, gave largess to the people, and embraced the ascetic life of a hermit.
To make this matter clear the Story of Sumedha -•»- must here be related. This story, though given in full in the Buddhavamsa,2 from its being in a metrical form, is not very easy to understand. I will therefore relate it with sentences at intervals explaining the metrical construction.
1 Lit. " caused the drums to be beaten."
2 A poem belonging to the Sutta-Pitaka, edited by Rd. Morris, Pali Text Soc., 1882.— Ed.
84: BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
Four asankheyyas and a hundred thousand cycles ago there was a city called Amaravati or Amara, resounding with the ten city cries, concerning which it is said in Buddhavamsa :
12. Four asankheyyas and a hundred thousand cycles ago A city there was called Amara, beautiful and pleasant, Resounding with the ten cries, abounding in food and drink.1
Then follows a stanza of Buddhavamsa enumerating some of these cries,
13. The trumpeting of elephants, the neighing of horses, (the
sound of) drums, trumpets, and chariots, And viands and drinks were cried, with the invitation, " Eat and drink."
It goes on to say :
14. A city supplied with every requisite, engaged in every sort
of industry, Possessing the seven precious things, thronged with
dwellers of many races ; The abode of devout men, like the prosperous city of the
angels.
15. In the city of Amaravati dwelt a brahmin named Sumedha, Whose hoard was many tens of millions, blest with much
wealth and store ;
16. Studious, knowing the Mantras, versed in the three Vedas, Master of the science of divination and of the traditions
and observances of his caste.
Now one day the wise Sumedha, having retired to the splendid upper apartment of his house, seated himself cross-legged, and fell a-thinking. " Oh ! wise man,2 grievous is rebirth in a new existence, and the dissolution of the body in each successive place where we are reborn. I am subject to birth, to decay, to disease, to death — it is right, being such, that I
1 Here a gloss in the text enumerates the whole ten cries. a The Bodhisatta is frequently called pandita, e.g. sasapantfito (Jat. No. 316), Ramapcwdito (Dasaratha Jat. No. 461).
THE STORY OF THE LINEAGE 85
should strive to attain the cool great deathless Nir vana, the tranquil, the free from birth and decay, and sickness, and grief and joy ; surely there must be a road that leads to Nirvana and releases man from becoming." Accordingly it is said :
17. Seated in seclusion, I then thought as follows : Grievous is rebirth and the breaking up of the body.
18. I am subject to birth, to decay, to disease,
Therefore will I seek Nirvana, undecaying, undying haven.
19. Let me leave this perishable body, this pestilent congrega
tion of vapours, And depart without desires and without wants.
20. There is, there must be a road, it cannot but be :
I will seek this road, that I may obtain release from becoming.1
Further he reasoned thus : " For as in this world there is pleasure as the correlative of pain, so where there is becoming there must be its opposite, the cessation of becoming ; and as where there is heat there is also cold which neutralizes it, so there must be a Nirvana 2 that extinguishes (the fires of) lust and the other passions ; and as in opposition to a bad and evil condition there is a good and blameless one, so where there is evil birth there must also be a Nirvana, called the birthless, because it puts an end to all that is called rebirth." Therefore it is said :
21. As where there is suffering there is also bliss,
So where there is becoming we must look for non-becoming.
22. And as where there is heat there is also cold,
So where there is the threefold fire of passion extinguishing must be sought,
23. And as coexistent with evil there is also good,
Even so where there is birth 3 the cessation of birth should be sought.
1 Bdhv., p. 7.
2 Lit. " Extinguishing ?'.
3 Mr. Fausboll points out to me that in tividhaggi and jati we have Vedic abbreviations.
86 BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
Again lie reasoned thus : " Just as a man who has fallen into a heap of filth, if he beholds afar off a great pond covered with lotuses of five colours, ought to seek that pond, saying : f By what way shall I arrive there ? ' ; but if he does not seek it the fault is not that of the pond ; even so where there is the lake of the great deathless Nirvana for the washing of the defilement of sin, if it is not sought it is not the fault of the lake. And just as a man who is surrounded by robbers, if when there is a way of escape he does not fly it is not the fault of the way but of the man ; even so when there is a blessed road leading to Nirvana for the man who is encompassed and held fast by sin, its not being sought is not the fault of the road but of the person. And as a man who is oppressed with sickness, there being a physician who can heal his disease, if he does not get cured by going to the phy sician that is no fault of the physician ; even so if a man who is oppressed by the disease of sin seeks not a spiritual guide who is at hand and knows the road which puts an end to sin, the fault lies with him and not with the sin-destroying teacher." Therefore it is said :
24. As a man fallen among filth, beholding a brimming lake, If he seek not that lake the fault is not in the lake ;
25. So when there exists a lake of Nirvana that washes the
stains of sin,
If a man seek not that lake, the fault is not in the lake of Nirvana.
26. As a man beset with foes, there being a way of escape, If he flee not away, the fault is not with the road ;
27. So when there is a way of bliss, if a man beset with sin Seek not that road, the fault is not in the way of bliss.
28. And as one who is diseased, there being a physician at hand, If he bid him not heal the disease, the fault is not in the
healer :
29. So if a man who is sick and oppressed with the disease of sin Seek not the spiritual teacher, the fault is not in the teacher.
THE STORY OF THE LINEAGE 87
And again he argued : "As a man fond of gay clothing, throwing off a corpse bound to his shoulders, goes away rejoicing, so must I, throwing off this perishable body, and freed from all care, enter the city of Nirvana. And as men and women depositing filth on a dungheap do not gather it in the fold or skirt of their garments, but loathing it, throw it away, feeling no desire for it ; so shall I also cast off this perishable body without regret, and enter the deathless city of Nirvana. And as seamen abandon without regret an unseaworthy ship and escape, so will I also, leaving this body, which distils corruption from its nine festering apertures, enter without regret the city of Nirvana. And as a man carrying various sorts of jewels and going on the same road with a band of robbers, out of fear of losing his jewels withdraws from them and gains a safe road ; even so this impure body is like a jewel-plundering robber, if I set my affections thereon the jewel of the good doctrine of the sublime path of holiness will be lost to me, therefore ought I to enter the city of Nirvana, forsaking this robber-like body." Therefore it is said :
30. As a man might with loathing shake off a corpse bound
upon his shoulders, And depart, secure, independent, master of himself ;
31. Even so let me depart, regretting nothing, wanting nothing. Leaving this perishable body, this collection of many foul
vapours.
32. And as men and women deposit filth upon a dungheap, And depart regretting nothing, wanting nothing,
33. So will I depart, leaving this body filled with foul vapours, As one leaves a cesspool after depositing ordure there.
34. And as the owners forsake the rotten bark that is shattered
and leaking, And depart without regret or longing,
88 BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
35. So shall I go, leaving this body with its nine apertures
ever running, As its owners desert the broken ship.
36. And as a man carrying wares, walking with robbers, Seeing danger of losing his wares, parts company with the
robbers and gets him gone,
37. Even so is this body like a mighty robber, — Leaving it I will depart through fear of losing good.
Having thus in nine similes pondered upon the advantages connected with retirement from the world, the wise Sumedha gave away at his own house, as aforesaid, an immense hoard of treasure to the indigent and wayfarers and sufferers, and kept open house. And renouncing all pleasures, both material and sensual, departing from the city of Amara, away from the world in Himavanta he made himself a hermitage near the mountain called Dhammaka, and built a hut and a cloister free from the five defects which are hindrances (to meditation). And with a view to obtain the power reckoned as supernormal knowledge, which is characterized by the eight casual qualities described in the words beginning " With a mind thus tranquillized "/ he embraced in that hermitage the ascetic life of a Kishi, casting off the cloak with its nine disadvantages, and wearing the garment of bark with its twelve advantages. And when he had thus given up the world, forsaking this hut, crowded with eight drawbacks, he repaired to the foot of a tree with its ten advantages, and rejecting all sorts of grain lived constantly upon wild fruits. And
1 Evam samdhite citte parisuddhe. pariyoddte anangane vigatu- pakkilese mudubhute kammaniye thite dnejjappatte ndnadas- sancLya cittarii abhimharati (Samannaphala Sutta, see Digha Nikdya, i, 76 ; Dialogues of the Buddha, i, 86).
THE STORY OF THE LINEAGE 89
strenuously exerting himself both in sitting and in standing and in walking, within a week he became the possessor of the eight attainments, and of the five supernormal knowledges ; and so, in accordance with his prayer, he attained the might of supernormal knowledge. Therefore it is said :
38. Having pondered thus I gave many thousand millions of
wealth To rich and poor, and made my way to Himavanta..
39. Not far from Himavanta is the mountain called Dhammaka, Here I made an excellent hermitage, and built with care
a leafy hut.
40. There I built me a cloister, free from five defects, Possessed of the eight good qualities, and attained the
strength of the supernormal knowledges.
41. Then I threw off the cloak possessed of the nine faults, And put on the raiment of bark possessed of the twelve
advantages.
42. I left the hut, crowded with the eight drawbacks, And went to the tree-foot possessed of ten advantages.1
43. Wholly did I reject the grain that is sown and planted, And partook of the constant fruits of the earth, possessed
of many advantages.
44. Then I strenuously strove, in sitting, in standing, and in
walking, And within seven days attained the might of the know-
Now while the hermit Sumedha, having thus attained the strength of supernormal knowledge, was living in the bliss of the (eight) attainments, the Teacher Dipankara appeared in the world. At the moment of his conception, of his birth, of his attain ment of Buddhahood, of his preaching his first dis course, the whole universe of ten thousand worlds trembled, shook and quaked, and gave forth a mighty
1 Mr. Fausboll writes to me that gune for guriehi must be viewed as an old Pali form originating in the Sanskrit gunaih.
2 Here follow four pages of later commentary or gloss, which I leave untranslated.
90 BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
sound, and the thirty-two marks showed themselves. But the hermit Sumedha, living in the bliss of the attainments, neither heard that sound nor beheld those signs. Therefore it is said :
45. Thus when I had attained the consummation, while I was
subjected to the teaching,
The Conqueror named Dipankara, chief of the universe, appeared.
46. At his conception, at his birth, at his Buddhahood, at his
preaching,
I saw not the four signs, plunged in the blissful trance of meditation.
At that time Dipankara Buddha, accompanied by a hundred thousand saints, wandering his way from place to place, reached the city of Ramma, and took up his residence in the great monastery of Sudassana. And the dwellers of the city of Ramma heard it said : " Dipankara, lord of ascetics, having attained supreme Buddhaship, and set rolling the wheel of the excellent Norm, wandering his way from place to place, has come to the town of Ramma, and dwells at the great monastery of Sudassana." And taking with them ghee and butter and other medicinal requisites and clothes and raiment, and bearing perfumes and garlands and other offerings in their hands, their minds bent towards the Buddha, the Doctrine, and the Order, inclining towards them, hanging upon them, they approached the Teacher, and worshipped him, and presenting the perfumes and other offerings, sat down on one side. And having heard his preaching of the Doctrine, and invited him for the next day, they rose from their seats and departed. And on the next day, having prepared alms-giving for the poor, and having decked out the town, they repaired the
THE STORY OF THE LINEAGE 91
road by which the Buddha was to come, throwing earth in the places that were worn away by water, and thereby levelling the surface, and scattering sand that looked like strips of silver. And they sprinkled fried paddy and flowers, and raised aloft flags and banners, of many-coloured cloths, and set up banana arches and rows of brimming jars. Then the hermit Sumedha, ascending from his hermitage, and pro ceeding through the air till he was above those men, and beholding the joyous multitude, exclaimed : " What can be the reason ? " and alighting stood on one side and questioned the people : " Tell me, why are you adorning this road ? " Therefore it is said :
47. In the region of the border districts, having invited the
Buddha,
With joyful hearts they are clearing the road by which he should come.
48. And I at that time leaving my hermitage, Rustling my barken tunic, departed through the air,
49. And seeing an excited multitude joyous and delighted, Descending from the air I straightway asked the men,
50. The people is excited, joyous, and happy,
For whom is the road being cleared, the path, the way of his coming ?
And the men replied : " Venerable Sumedha, dost thou not know ? Dipankara Buddha, having attained supreme knowledge, and set rolling the wheel of the glorious Doctrine, travelling from place to place, has reached our town, and dwells at the great monastery Sudassana ; we have invited the Blessed One, and are making ready for the blessed Buddha the road by which he is to come.'' And the hermit Sumedha thought : " The very sound of the word Buddha is rarely met with in the world, much more the actual appearance of a Buddha ; it behoves me to join these
92 BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
men in clearing the road." He said therefore to the men : " If .you are clearing this road for the Buddha, assign to me a piece of ground, I will clear the ground in company with you." They consented, saying : "It is well " ; and perceiving the hermit Sumedha to be possessed of supernatural power, they fixed upon a swampy piece of ground, and assigned it to him, saying : " Do thou prepare this spot." Sumedha, his heart filled with joy of which the Buddha was the cause, thought within himself : "I am able to prepare this piece of ground by supernatural power, but if so prepared it will give me no satisfaction ; this day it behoves me to perform menial duties " ; and fetching earth he threw it upon the spot.
But ere the ground could be cleared by him — with a train of a hundred thousand miracle-working saints endowed with the six supernormal knowledges, while devas offered celestial wreaths and perfumes, while celestial hymns rang forth, and men paid their homage with earthly perfumes arid with flowers and other offerings, Dlpankara endowed with the ten Forces, with all a Buddha's transcendant majesty, like a lion rousing himself to seek his prey on the Vermilion plain, came down into the road all decked and made ready for him. Then the hermit Sumedha — as the Buddha with unblenching eyes approached along the road prepared for him, beholding that form endowed with the perfection of beauty, adorned with the thirty- two marks of a super-man, and marked with the eighty minor beauties, attended by a halo of a fathom's depth and sending forth in streams the six-hued Buddha- rays, linked in pairs of different colours, and wreathed
THE STORY OF THE LINEAGE 93
like the varied lightnings that flash in the gem-studded vault of heaven — exclaimed : " This day it behoves me to make sacrifice of my life for the Buddha : let not the Blessed one walk in the mire — nay, let him advance with his four hundred thousand saints trampling on my body as if walking upon a bridge of jewelled planks, this deed will long be for my good and my happiness." So saying, he loosed his hair, and spreading in the sooty mire his hermit's skin mantle, roll of matted hair and garment of bark, he lay down in the mire like a bridge of jewelled planks. Therefore it is said :
61. Questioned by me they replied, An incomparable Buddha
is born into the world,
The Conqueror named Dipankara, lord of the universe, For him the road is cleared, the way, the path of his
coming. 52. When I heard the name of Buddha joy sprang up forthwith
within me,
Repeating, a Buddha, a Buddha! I gave utterance to my joy. 63. Standing there I pondered, joyful and excited,
Here I will sow the seed, may the happy moment not pass away !
54. If you clear a path for the Buddha, assign to me a place, I also will clear the road, the way, the path of his coming.
55. Then they gave me a piece of ground to clear the pathway ; Then repeating within me, a Buddha, a Buddha ! I cleared
the road.
56. But ere my portion was cleared, Dipankara the great sage, The Conqueror, entered the road with four hundred
thousand saints like himself, Possessed of the six superknowledges, pure from all taint
of sin. 67. On every side men rise to receive him, many drums sound,
Men and spirits overjoyed send forth their applause. 58. Devas look upon men, men upon devas,
And both with clasped hands upraised approach "him
who had thus come." 69. Devas with deva-music, men with earthly music,
Both sending forth their strains approach " him who had thus come."
94 BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
60. Devas floating in the air sprinkle down in all directions Erythrina flowers of deva- world, lotuses and coral flowers.
6 1 . Men standing on the ground throw upwards in all directions Champac and Salala flowers, Cadamba and fragrant Mesua,
Punnaga, and Ketaka.
62. Then I loosed my hair, and spreading in the mire Bark robe and mantle of skin, lay prone upon my face.
63. Let the Buddha advance with his disciples, treading upon
me ; Let him not tread in the mire, it will be for my blessing.
And as he lay in the mire, again beholding the Buddha-majesty of Dipankara Buddha with his unblenching gaze, he thought as follows : " Were I willing, I could enter the city of Ramma as a novice in the priesthood, after having destroyed all human passions ; but why should I disguise myself l to attain Nirvana after the destruction of human passion ? Let me rather, like Dipankara, having risen to the supreme knowledge of the Doctrine, enable mankind to enter the Ship of the Doctrine, and so carry them across the Ocean of Going-on, and when this is done afterwards attain Nirvana ; this indeed it is right that I should do." Then having enumerated the eight conditions (necessary to the attainment of Buddha- hood), and having made the resolution to become Buddha, he laid himself down. Therefore it is said :
1 The following is what I take to be the meaning of this passage : " If I chose I could at once enter the Buddhist Order, and by the practice of ecstatic meditation ( Jhana) free myself from human passion, and become an Arahant or saint. I should then at death at once attain Nirvana and cease to be reborn. But this would be a selfish course to pursue, for thus I should benefit myself only. Why should I thus slip unobserved and in the humble garb of a monk into Nirvana ? Nay, let me rather qualify myself to become a Buddha, and so save others as well as myself." This is the great ACT OF RENUNCIATION by which the Bodhisattva, when Nirvana was within his grasp, preferred to endure ages of heroic trials in the exercise of the Paramitas, that he might be enabled to become a Buddha, and so redeem mankind. See D'Alwis's Introduction to Kachchayana's Grammar, p. vi.
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64. As I lay upon the ground this was the thought of my heart, If I wished it I might this day destroy within me all
human passions.
65. But why should I in disguise arrive at the knowledge of
the Truth ?
I will attain omniscience and become a Buddha, and (save) men and devas.
66. Why should I cross the ocean resolute but alone ?
I will attain omniscience, and enable men and devas to cross.
67. By this resolution of mine, I a man of resolution Will attain omniscience, and save many folk.
68. Cutting off the stream of transmigration, annihilating the
three forms of rebirth,
Embarking in the ship of the Norm, I will carry across with me men and devas.1
And the blessed Dipankara having reached the spot stood close by the hermit Sumedha's head. And opening his eyes possessed of the five kinds of grace as one opens a jewelled window, and beholding the hermit Sumedha lying in the mire, thought to himself : " This hermit who lies here has formed the resolution to be a Buddha ; will his wish be fulfilled or not ? " And casting forward his prescient gaze into the future, and considering, he perceived that four asankheyyas and a hundred thousand cycles from that time he would become a Buddha named Gotama. And stand ing there in the midst of the assembly he delivered this prophecy, " See ye this very austere ascetic lying in the rnire ? " " Yes, lord," they answered. " This man lies here having made the resolution to become a Buddha, his wish will be answered ; at the end of four asankheyyas and a hundred thousand cycles hence he will become a Buddha named Gotama, and in that birth the city Kapilavatthu will be his
1 What follows from yasma to nipajji belongs to a later com mentary. I resume the translation with p. 15, 1. 11 of the text.
96 BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
residence, queen Maya will be his mother, king Suddhodana his father, his chief disciple will be the thera Upatissa, his second disciple the thera Kolita, the Buddha's servitor will be Ananda, his chief female disciple the nun Khema, the second the nun Uppala- vanna. When he attains to years of ripe knowledge, having retired from the world and made the great exertion, having received at the foot of a banyan-tree a meal of rice milk, and partaken of it by the banks of the Neranjara, having ascended the bo-tree seat, he will, at the foot of a fig-tree, attain Supreme Buddha- hood. Therefore it is said :
70. Dipankara, knower of all worlds, receiver of offerings, Standing by that which pillowed my head, spoke these
words :
71. See ye this very austere hermit with his matted hair, Countless ages hence he will be a Buddha in this world.
72. Lo, "he who has thus come" departing from pleasant
Kapila,
Having made the great effort, performed all manner of austerities.
73. Having sat at the foot of the Ajapala tree, and there
received rice pottage, Shall approach the Neranjara river.
74. Having received the rice pottage on the banks of the
Neranjara, the Conqueror
Shall come by a fair road prepared for him to the foot of the Bodhi-tree.
75. Then, unrivalled and glorious, reverentially saluting the
Bodhi-seat, At the foot of a fig-tree he shall be awakened.1
76. The mother that bears him shall be called Maya,
His father will be Suddhodana, he himself will be Gotama.
77. His chief disciples will be Upatissa and Kolita,
Men sane and immune, void of passion, calm- minded and intent.
78. The servitor Ananda will attend upon the Conqueror, Khema and Uppalavanna will be his chief women disciples,
79. Women sane and immune, void of passion, calm-minded
and intent, The Bodhi-tree of this Buddha is known as the Assattha.
1 Bujjhissati.
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The hermit Sumedha, exclaiming : " My wish, it seems, will be accomplished ", was filled with happi ness. The multitudes, hearing the words of Dipankara Buddha, were joyous and delighted, exclaiming : " The hermit Sumedha, it seems, is a Buddha-seed, a Buddha-shoot ! " For thus they thought : " As a man fording a river, if he is unable to cross to the ford opposite him, crosses to a ford lower down the stream, even so we, if under the dispensation of Dipankara Buddha we fail to attain the Paths and their fruition, yet when thou shalt become Buddha we shall be enabled in thy presence to make the paths and their fruition our own " — and so they recorded their wish (for future sanctification). And Dipankara Buddha also having praised the Bodhisatta, and made an offering to him of eight handfuls of flowers, reverentially saluted him and departed. And the Arahants also, four hundred thousand in numbers having made offerings to the Bodhisatta of perfume, and garlands, reverentially saluted him and departed. And the devas and men having made the same offerings, and bowed down to him, went their way.
And the Bodhisatta, when all had retired, rising from his seat and exclaiming : ''I will study the Perfections ", sat himself down cross-legged on a heap of flowers. And as the Bodhisatta sat thus, the devas in all the ten thousand worlds assembling shouted applause. " Venerable hermit Sumedha ", they said, " all the omen& which have manifested themselves when former Bodhisattas seated themselves cross- legged, saying : * We will study the Perfections ' — all these this day have appeared : assuredly thou shalt become Buddha. This we know : to whom these
98 BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
omens appear, he surely will become Buddha ; do thou make a strenuous effort and exert thyself". With these words they lauded the Bodhisatta with varied praises. Therefore it is said :
80. Hearing these words of the incomparable Sage,
Devas and men delighted, exclaimed, This is a Buddha- seed-seedling !
81. A great clamour arises, men and devas in ten thousand
worlds
Clap their hands, and laugh, and make obeisance with clasped hands.
82 . c ' Should we fail, ' ' they say, ' ' in this Buddha's dispensation , Yet in time to come we shall stand before him.
83. As men crossing a river, if they fail to reach the opposite
ford, Gaining the lower ford cross the great river,
84. Even so we all, if we lose this Buddha, In time to come shall stand before him."
85. The world-knowing DIpankara, the receiver of offerings, Having celebrated my action, went his way.1
86. All his disciples of the Buddha that were present saluted
me with reverence,
Men, Nagas, and Gandhabbas bowed down to me and departed.
87. When the Lord of the world with his following had passed
beyond my sight, Then glad, with gladsome heart, I rose up from my seat.
88. Happy I am by happiness, glad with a great gladness ; Flooded with rapture then I seated myself cross-legged.
89. And even as thus I sat I thought within myself,
I am trained in Jhana, I have mastered the supernormal knowledges.
90. In a thousand worlds there are no sages that rival me, Unrivalled in miraculous powers I have reached this bliss.
91. When thus they beheld me sitting,2 the dwellers of ten
thousand worlds Raised a mighty shout : Surely thou shalt be a Buddha !
92. The omens 3 beheld in former ages when Bodhisatta sat
cross-legged, The same are beheld this day.
1 Lit., " raised his right foot (to depart)."
2 Lit., " at my sitting cross-legged."
3 Mr. Fausboll writes that yarn is a mistake of the copyist for yd=ydni.
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93. Cold is dispelled and heat ceases,
This day these things are seen, — verily them shalt be Buddha.
94. A thousand worlds are stilled and silent.
So are they seen to-day, — verily thou shalt be Buddha.
95. The mighty winds blow not, the rivers cease to flow, These things are seen to-day, — verily thou shalt be Buddha.
96. All flowers blossom on land and sea.
This day they all have bloomed, — verily thou shalt be Buddha.
97. All creepers and trees are laden with fruit,
This day they all bear fruit, — verily thou shalt be Buddha.
98. Gems sparkle in earth and sky,
This day all gems do glitter, — verily thou shalt be Buddha.
99. Music earthly and deva-music,
Both these to-day send forth their strains — verily thou shalt be Buddha.
100. Flowers of every hue rain down from the sky,
This day they are seen — verily thou shalt be Buddha.
101. The mighty ocean bends itself, ten thousand worlds are
shaken,
This day they both send up their roar — verily thou shalt be Buddha.
102. In hell the fires of ten thousand worlds die out,
This day these fires are quenched — verily thou shalt be Buddha.
103. Unclouded is the sun and all the stars are seen,
These things are seen to-day — verily thou shalt be Buddha.
104. Though no rain fell in water that burst forth from the
earth,
This day that bursts forth from the earth — verily thou shalt be Buddha.
105. The constellations are all aglow, and the lunar mansions
in the vault of heaven,
Visakha is in conjunction with the moon — verily thou shalt be Buddha.
106. Those creatures that dwell in holes and caves depart each
from his lair,
This day these lairs are forsaken — verily thou shalt be Buddha.
107. There is no discontent among mortals, but they are filled
with contentment, This day all are content — verily thou shalt be Buddha.
108. Then diseases are dispelled and hunger ceases,
This day these things are seen — verily thou shalt be Buddha
109. Then Lust wastes away, Hate and Dullness perish,
This day all these are dispelled — verily thou shalt Le Buddha.
100 BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
110. No danger then comes near ; this day this thing is seen, By this sign we know it — verily thou shalt become Buddha.
111. No dust flies up ; this day this thing is seen,
By this sign we know it, verily thou shalt be Buddha.
112. All noisome odours flee away, divine fragrance breathes
around,
Such fragrance breathes this day — verily thou shalt be Buddha.
113. All the devas are manifested, the Formless only excepted, This day they all are seen — verily thou shalt be Buddha.
114. All the hells become visible,
These all are seen this day — verily thou shalt be Buddha.
115. Then walls, and doors, and rocks are no impediment, This day they have melted into space — verily thou shalt
be Buddha.
1 16. At that moment death and birth do not take place,
This day these things are seen — verily thou ehalt be Buddha.
117. Do thou make a strenuous effort, hold not back, go forward,
This thing we know — verily thou shalt be Buddha.
And the Bodhisatta, having heard the words of Dlpankara Buddha and of the devas in ten thousand worlds filled with abounding vigour, thought thus within himself : " The Buddhas are beings whose word cannot fail ; there is no deviation from truth in their speech. For as the fall of a clod thrown into the air, as the death of a mortal, as the sunrise at dawn, as a lion's roaring when he leaves his lair, as the delivery of a woman with child, as all these things are sure and certain — even so the word of the Buddhas is sure and cannot fail, verily I shall become a Buddha." Therefore it is said :
118. Having heard the words of Buddha and of the devas of
ten thousand worlds, Glad, joyous, delighted, I then thought thus within myself ;
119. The Buddhas speak not doubtful words, the Conquerors
speak not vain words,
There is no falsehood in the Buddhas— verily I shall become a Buddha.
120. As a clod cast into the air doth surely fall to the ground, So the word of the glorious Buddhas is sure and everlasting.
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121. As the death of all mortals ig sure and constant,
So the word of the glorious Buddhas is sure and everlasting.
122. As the rising of the sun is certain when night has faded, So the word of the glorious Buddhas is sure and everlasting.
123. As the roaring of a lion who has left his den is certain, So the word of the glorious Buddhas is sure and everlasting.
124. As the delivery of women with child is certain,
So the word of the glorious Buddhas is sure and everlasting.
And having thus made the resolution : "I shall surely become Buddha ", with a view to considering the conditions that constitute a Buddha, exclaiming : " Where are the conditions that make the Buddha, are they found above or below, in the principle or the minor directions ? " studying successively the principles of all things, and beholding the first Perfec tion of Giving, practised and followed by former Bodhisattas, he thus admonished himself : " Wise Sumedha, from this time forth thou must fulfil the perfection of Giving ; for as a water- jar over turned discharges the water so that none remains, and cannot recover it, even so if thou, indifferent to wealth and fame, and wife and child, and goods great and small, give away to all who come and ask every thing that they require till nought remains, thou shalt seat thyself at the foot of the tree of Bodhi and become a Buddha." With these words he strenuously resolved to attain the first perfection of Giving. Therefore it is said :
125. Come, I will search the Buddha-making conditions, this
way and that,
Above and below, in all the ten directions, as far as the principles of things extend.
126. Then, as I made my search, I beheld the first the Giving-
perfection. The high road followed by former sages,
127. Do thou strenuously taking it upon thyself advance
To this first perfection : Giving, if thou wilt attain Buddha- ship.
102 BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
128. As a brimming water- jar, overturned by any one, Discharges entirely all the water, and retains none within,
129. Even so, when thou seest any that ask, great, small, and
middling, Do thou give away all in alms, as the water-jar overthrown.
But considering further : " There must be beside this, other conditions that make a Buddha ", and beholding the second Perfection : Moral Practice, he thought thus : " 0 wise Sumedha.from this day forth mayest thou fulfil the perfection of Morality ; for as the yak ox, regardless of his life, guards his bushy tail, even so thou shalt become Buddha, if from this day forward regardless of thy life thou keepest the moral precepts." And he strenuously resolved to attain the second perfection, Moral Practice. There fore it is said :
130. The conditions of a Buddha cannot in sooth be so few,
I will study the other conditions that bring Buddhaship to maturity.
131. Then studying I beheld the second Perfection of Morality Practised and followed by former sages.
132. This second one do thou strenuously undertake,
And reach the perfection Moral Practice if thou wilt attain Buddhahood.
133. And as the yak cow, when her tail has got in aught
entangled, Then and there awaits death, and will not injure her tail,1
134. So also do thou, having fulfilled the moral precepts in the
four stages, Ever guard the Sila as the yak guards her tail.
But considering further : " These cannot be the only Buddha-making conditions", and beholding the third Perfection of Self-abnegation, he thought thus : " 0 wise Sumedha, mayest thou henceforth fulfil the
1 viz., I suppose, by dragging it forcibly away. This metaphor, which to us appears wanting in dignity, is a favourite one with the Hindus. The tail of the Yak or Tibetan ox (Bos Grunniens] is a beautiful object, and one of the insignia of Hindu royalty.
THE STORY OF THE LINEAGE 103
perfection of Abnegation ; for as a man long the denizen of a prison feels no love for it, but is dis contented, and wishes to live there no more, even so do thou, likening all births to a prison-house, dis contented with all births, and anxious to get rid of them, set thy face toward abnegation, thus shalt thou become Buddha." And he strenuously made the resolution to attain the third Perfection of Self- abnegation. Therefore it is said :
135. For the conditions that make a Buddha cannot be so few, I will study others, the conditions that bring Buddhaship
to maturity.
136. Studying then I beheld the third Perfection, Abnegation Practised and followed by former sages.
137. This third one do thou strenuously undertake,
And reach the perfection of abnegation, if thou wilt attain Buddhahood.
138. As a man long a denizen of the house of bonds, oppressed
with suffering, Feels no pleasure therein, but rather longs for release,
139. Even so do thou look upon all births as prison-houses, Set thy face towards self-abnegation, to obtain release from
becoming.
But considering further : " These cannot be the only Buddha-making conditions ", and beholding the fourth Perfection of Wisdom, he thought thus : " 0 wise Sumedha, do thou from this day forth fulfil the Perfection of Wisdom, avoiding no subject of know ledge, great, small, or middling,1 do thou approach all wise men and ask them questions ; for as the mendi cant friar on his begging rounds, avoiding none of the families, great and small, that he frequents,2 and wandering for alms from place to place, speedily
1 Lit., " not avoiding anything among things great, small, and middling."
a After kind understand kularii, as will be seen from v. 143.
104 BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
gets food to support him, even so shalt thou, approach ing all wise men, and asking them questions, become a Buddha." And he strenuously resolved to attain the fourth Perfection, Wisdom. Therefore it is said :
140. For the conditions that make a Buddha cannot be so few, I will study the other conditions that bring Buddhaship to
maturity.
£141. Studying then I beheld the fourth Perfection : Wisdom Practised and followed by former sages.
142. This fourth do thou strenuously undertake,
And reach the Perfection of Wisdom, if thou wilt attain Buddhahood.
143. And as a monk on his begging rounds avoids no families, Either small, or great, or middling, and so obtains sub sistence,
144. Even so thou, constantly questioning wise men,
And reaching the Wisdom Perfection, shall attain supreme Buddhaship.
But considering further : " These cannot be the only Buddha-making conditions ", and seeing the fifth Perfection of Exertion, he thought thus : "0 wise Sumedha, do thou from this day forth fulfil the Perfection of Exertion. As the lion, the king of beasts, in every action * strenuously exerts himself, so if thou in all rebirths and in all thy acts art strenuous in exertion, and not a laggard, thou shalt become a Buddha ". And he made a firm resolve to attain the fifth Perfection, Exertion. Therefore it is said :
145. For the conditions of a Buddha cannot be so few,
I will study the other conditions which bring Buddhaship to maturity.
146. Studying then I beheld the fifth Perfection : Exertion Practised and followed by former sages.
147. This fifth do thou strenuously undertake,
And reach the perfection : Exertion, if thou wilt attain Buddhahood.
1 Lit., in all postures, walking, standing, etc.
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148. As the lion, king of beasts, in lying, standing, and walking Is no laggard, but ever of resolute heart,
149. Even so do thou also in every existence strenuously exert
thyself,
And reaching the perfection, Exertion, thou shalt attain the supreme Buddhaship.
But considering further : " These cannot be the only Buddha-making conditions ", and beholding the sixth Perfection of Patience, he thought to him self : " 0 wise Sumedha, do thou from this time forth fulfil the Perfection Patience ; be thou patient in praise and in reproach. And as when men throw things pure or foul upon the earth, the. earth does not feel either desire or repulsion towards them, but suffers them, endures them and consents to them, even so thou also, if thou art patient in praise and reproach shalt become a Buddha." And he strenuously resolved to attain the sixth perfection, Patience. Therefore it is said :
150. For the conditions of a Buddha cannot be so few,
I will study other conditions also which bring about Buddhaship.
151. Studying then I beheld the sixth Perfection of Patience Practised and followed by former Buddhas.
152. Having strenuously taken upon thee this sixth perfection, Then with unwavering mind thou shalt attain supreme
Buddhaship.
153. And as the earth endures all that is thrown upon it, Whether things pure or impure, and feels neither anger nor
pity,
154. Even so enduring the praises and reproaches of all men, Going on to perfect Patience, thou shalt attain supreme
Buddhaship.
But further considering : " These cannot be the only conditions that make a Buddha", and beholding the seventh Perfection of Truth, he thought thus within himself : "0 wise Sumedha, from this time
106 BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
forth do thou fulfil the perfection of Truth ; though the thunderbolt descend upon thy head, do thou never under the influence of desire or otherwise, utter a conscious lie, for the sake of wealth or anything else. And as the planet Venus at all seasons pursues her own course, nor ever goes on another course forsaking her OWD, even so, if thou forsake not truth and utter no lie, thou shalt become Buddha ". And he strenuously turned his mind to the seventh Perfection, Truth. Therefore it is said :
155. For these are not all the conditions of a Buddha,
I will study other conditions which bring about Buddha- ship.
156. Studying then I beheld the seventh Perfection of Truth Practised and followed by former Buddhas.
157. Having strenuously taken upon thyself this seventh
perfection,
Then free from duplicity of speech thou shalt attain supreme Buddhaship.
158. And as the Planet Venus, balanced in all her times and
seasons, In the world of men and devas, departs not from her path,
159. Even so do thou not depart from the course of truth,1 Advancing to the perfection of Truth, thou shalt attain
supreme Buddhaship.
But further considering : " These cannot be the only conditions that make a Buddha", and beholding the eighth Perfection of Resolution, he thought thus within himself : " 0 wise Sumedha, do thou from this time forth fulfil the perfection of Resolution ; what soever thou resolvest be thou unshaken in that resolution. For as a mountain, the wind beating upon it in all directions, trembles not, moves not, but stands in its place, even so thou, if unswerving in thy resolu tion, shalt become Buddha." And he strenuously
1 Lit., depart from thy course in the matter of truthful things.
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resolved to attain the eighth Perfection, Resolution. Therefore it is said :
160. For these are not all the conditions of a Buddha,
I will study other conditions that bring about Buddhaship.
161. (Studying then I beheld the eighth Perfection : Resolution Practised and followed by former Buddhas.
162. Do thou resolutely take upon thyself this eighth perfection. Then thou being immovable shalt attain supreme Buddha- ship.
163. And as the rocky mountain, immovable, firmly based,
Is unshaken by many winds, and stands in its own place,
164. Even so do thou also remain ever immovable in resolution, Advancing to the perfection of Resolution, thou shalt
attain supreme Buddhaship.
But further considering : " These cannot be the only conditions that make a Buddha", and beholding the ninth Perfection of Good-will, he thought thus within himself : " 0 wise Sumedha, do thou from this time forth fulfil the perfection of Good-will, mayest thou be of one mind towards friends and foes. And as water fills with its refreshing coolness good men and bad alike,1 even so, if thou art of one mind in friendly feeling towards all mortals thou shalt become Buddha." And he strenuously resolved to attain the ninth perfection of Good-will. Therefore it is said :
165. For these are not all the conditions of a Buddha,
I will study other conditions that bring about Buddhaship.
166. Studying I beheld the ninth Perfection of Good- will Practised and followed by former Buddhas.
167. Do thou, taking resolutely upon thyself this ninth perfec
tion, Become unrivalled in kindness, if thou wilt become Buddha.
168. And as water fills with its coolness
Good men and bad alike, and carries off all impurity,
169. Even so do thou look with friendship alike on the evil
and the good,
Advancing to the perfection Good-will, thou shalt attain supreme Buddhaship.
1 Lit., having made its coldness exactly alike for bad people and good people, pervades them.
108 BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
But further considering : " These cannot be the only conditions that make a Buddha", and beholding the tenth Perfection : Equanimity, he thought thus within himself : "0 wise Sumedha, from this time do thou fulfil the perfection of Equanimity, be thou of equal mind in prosperity and adversity. And as the earth is indifferent when things pure or impure are cast upon it, even so, if thou art indifferent in prosperity and adversity, thou shalt become Buddha." And he strenuously resolved to attain the tenth Perfection, Equanimity. Therefore it is said :
170. For these cannot be all the conditions of a Buddha,
I will study other conditions that bring about Buddhaship.
171. Studying then I beheld the tenth Perfection : Equanimity Practised and followed by former Buddhas.
172. If thou take resolutely upon thyself this tenth perfection, Becoming well-balanced and firm, thou shalt attain
supreme Buddhaship.
173. And as the earth is indifferent to pure and impure things
cast upon her. To both alike, and is free from anger and favour,
174. Even so do thou ever be evenly-balanced in joy and grief, Advancing to the perfection, Equanimity, thou ehalt
attain supreme Buddhaship.
Then he thought : " These are the only conditions in this world that, bringing Buddhaship to perfection and constituting a Buddha, have to be fufilled by Bodhisattas ; beside the ten Perfections there are no others. And these ten Perfections are neither in the heaven above nor in the earth below, nor are they to be found in the east, or the other quarters, but reside in my heart of flesh." Having thus realized that the Perfections were established in his heart, having strenuously resolved to keep them all, grasping them again and again, he mastered them forwards
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and backwards ; * taking them at the end he went backward to the beginning, taking them at the beginning he placed them at the end,2 taking them at the middle he carried them to the two ends, taking them at both ends he carried them to the middle. Repeating : " The Perfections are the sacrifice of limbs, the Lesser Perfections are the sacrifice of property, the Unlimited Perfections are the sacrifice of life", he mastered them as the Perfections, the Lesser Perfections and the Unlimited Perfections — like one who converts two kindred oils into one,3 or like one who, using Mount Meru for his churning-rod, churns the great Chakkavala ocean. And as he grasped again and again the ten Perfections, by the glow of his piety,4 this earth, four nahutas and eight hundred thousand leagues in breadth, like a bundle of reeds trodden by an elephant, or a sugar-mill in motion, uttering a mighty roar, trembled, shook and quaked, and spun round like a potter's wheel or the wheel of an oil-mill. Therefore it is said :
175. These are all the conditions in the world that bring
Buddhaship to perfection ; Beyond these are no others, therein do thou stand fast.
176. While he grasped these conditions natural and intrinsic,6 By the power of his piety the earth of ten thousand worlds
quaked.
177. The earth sways and thunders like a sugar-mill at work, Like the wheel of an oil- mill so shakes the earth.
1 i.e., alternately from the first to the tenth and from the tenth to the first.
1 i.e., put the first last.
3 Vijesinha.
4 Dhamma.
8 Vijesinha writes to me : " Natural and intrinsic virtues. The Sinhalese glosa says : paramarthavu rasasahitavu lakshana-cet nohot svabhavalakshana ha sarvadharmasadharanalaJcsharia-ceti. In the latter case it would mean having the quality of conformity with all laws."
110 BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
And while the earth was trembling the people of Ramnia, unable to endure it, like great Sal-trees, over thrown by the wind that blows at the end of a cycle, fell swooning here and there, while waterpots and other vessels, revolving like a jar on a potter's wheel, struck against each other and were dashed and ground to pieces. The multitudes in fear and trembling approaching the Teacher (Dipankara) said : " Tell us, Blessed one, is this turmoil caused by Nagas, or is it caused by either demons, or ogres, or by devas ? — for this we know not, but truly this whole multitude is grievously afflicted. Pray does this portend evil to the world or good ? Tell us the cause of it." The Teacher hearing their words said : " Fear not nor be troubled, there is no danger to you from this. The wise Sumedha, concerning whom I predicted this day : * Hereafter he will be a Buddha named Gotama,' is now mastering the Perfections, and while he masters them and turns them about, by the power of his piety the whole ten thousand worlds with one accord quake and thunder." Therefore it is said :
178. All the multitude that was there in attendance on the
Buddha, Trembling, fell swooning there upon the ground.
179. Many thousands of waterpots and many hundred jars Were crushed and pounded there and dashed against each
other.
180. Excited, trembling, terrified, confused, their sense dis
ordered, The multitudes assembling, approached the Buddha.
181. Say, will it be good or evil to the world ?
The whole world is afflicted, ward off this (danger), thou Seer!
182. Then the great Sage Dipankara enjoined upon them, Be confident, be not afraid at this earthquaking :
183. He of whom I foretold this day, he will be a Buddha in
this world, The same is the law of the past followed by the Conquerors.
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184. Therefore while he is pondering fully the norm, the ground
work of a Buddha,
This ten thousand-fold earth of men and of devas is shaken.
And the people hearing the Buddha's words, joyful and delighted, taking with them garlands, perfumes and unguents, left the city of Kamma, and went to the Bodhisatta. And having offered their flowers and other presents, and bowed to him and respectfully saluted him, they returned to the city of Eamma. And the Bodhisatta, having made a strenuous exertion of resolve, rose from the seat on which he sat. Therefore it is said :
185. Having heard the Buddha's word, their minds were
straightway calmed, All of them approaching me again paid me their homage.
186. Having taken upon me the Perfections of a Buddha, having
made firm my resolve, Having bowed to Dipankara, I rose from my seat.
And as the Bodhisatta rose from his seat, the devas in all the ten thousand worlds having assembled and offered him garlands and perfumes, uttered these and other words of praise and blessing : " Venerable hermit Sumedha, this day thou hast made a mighty resolve at the feet of Dipankara Buddha, mayest thou fulfil it without let or hindrance : fear not nor be dismayed, may not the slightest sickness visit thy frame, quickly exercise the Perfections and attain supreme Buddhaship. As the flowering and fruit- bearing trees bring forth flowers and fruit in their season, so do thou also, not letting the right season pass by, quickly reach the supreme enlightenment," and thus having spoken, they returned each one to his deva-home. Then the Bodhisatta, having
112 BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES
received the homage of the devas, made a strenuous exertion of resolve, saying : " Having fulfilled the ten Perfections, at the end of four asankheyyas and a hundred thousand cycles I shall become a Buddha." And rising into the air he returned to Himavanta. Therefore it is said :
187. As he rose from his seat both devas and men Sprinkle him with divine and earthly flowers.
188. Both devas and men pronounce their blessing :
A great thing hast thou willed, mayest thou obtain it according to thy wish.
189. May all dangers be averted, may every sickness vanish, Mayest thou have no hindrance — quickly reach the
supreme enlightenment.
190. As when the season is come the flowering trees blossom, Even so do thou, O mighty one, blossom with the know ledge of a Buddha.
191. As all the Buddhas have fulfilled the ten Perfections, Even so do thou, 0 mighty one, fulfil the ten Perfections.
192. As all the Buddhas are awakened on the seat of enlighten
ment,
Even so be thou, O mighty one, awakened in conqueror's wisdom.
193. As all the Buddhas have set rolling the wheel of the Norm, Even so do thou, O mighty one, set it rolling.
194. As the moon on the mid-day of the month shines in her
purity,
Even so do thou, with thy mind at the full, shine in ten thousand worlds.
195. As the sun released by Rahu glows fervently in his heat, Even so, having released mankind, do thou shine in all thy
majesty,
196. As all the rivers find their way to the great ocean,
Even so may the worlds of men and devas take refuge in thee !
197. The Bodhisatta extolled with these praises, taking on
himself the ten conditions,
Commencing to fulfil these conditions, entered the forest then.
End of the Story of SumedJta.
And the people of the city of Ramma, having re turned to the city, kept open house to the Order with the Buddha at their head. The Teacher having
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preached the Doctrine to them, and established them in the three Kefuges and the other branches (of the faith), departing from the city of Kamma, living thereafter his allotted span of life, having fulfilled all the duties of a Buddha, in due course attained that Nirvana in which no condition of rebirth remains. On this subject all that need be said can be learnt