Story of Nation Buddhist India

SR No.: 035274
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: T Fisher Unwin Ltd
Publication Year: 1916
Total Pages: 356
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 88 MB

Page 226

THE J4TAKA B00k
205
taken for granted in the illustrations on the ancient bas-reliefs, ought also, in such questions, to have due weight attached to it.
We may already note some points in the comparative age of the Jātakas, as compared one with another, especially at two stages in the formation of the tradition. The whole of the longer stories, some of them as long as a modern novelette, contained in vol. vi. of the edition, are later, both in language and in their view of social conditions in India, than those in the earlier voluines. Yet several of those latest in the collection are shown by the bas-reliefs to have been already in existence in the third century B.C. And this holds good, not only of the verses, but also of the prose, for the bas-reliefs refer to the prose portions of the tales.'
So also, at an earlier stage, it is possible to conclude that some of the tales, when they were first adopted into the Buddhist tradition (that is, certainly, not later than the beginning of the third century, B.C.), were already old. We have seen above that, out of those tales of which we can trace the pre-Jātaka book form, a large proportion, 60 to 70 per cent., had no verses. Now, in the present collection, there are a considerable number of tales which, as tales, have no verses. The verses (necessarily added to make the stories into Jätakas) are found only in the framework.' And there are
1 See in the Appendix, under Vidhura, Sama, Ummagga, and Vessantara Jātakas.
? See now M. Senart's article on these Abhisambuddha-Gathā, in the Fournal Asiatique for 1902.