________________
THE JAT414 BOOK
197
record. It does not contain all the Jātakas that were current, in the earliest period of their literature, among the Buddhist community.
So much is certain. But I venture to go farther and to suggest that the character of these ten earlier Jātakas, in their pre-Jātaka shape, enables us to trace their history back beyond the Buddhist literature altogether. None of them are specially Buddhist. They are modified, perhaps, more or less to suit Buddhist ethics. But even the Mahā-sudassana, which is the most so, is in the main simply an ancient Indian legend of sun worship. And the rest are preBuddhistic Indian folklore. There is nothing peculiarly Buddhist about them. Even the ethics they inculcate are Indian. What is Buddhist about them, in this their oldest shape, is only the selection made. There was, of course, much other folklore, bound up with superstition. This is left out. And the ethic is, of course, of a very simple kind. It is milk for babes. This comes out clearly in the legend of the Great King of Glory—the Mahā-sudassana. In its later Jātaka form' it lays stress on the impermanence of all earthly things, on the old lesson of the vanity of the world. In its older form, as a Suttanta, it lays stress also on the Ecstasies (the Jhānas), which are perhaps pre-Buddhistic, and on the Sublime Con. ditions (the Bralma-Vihāras), which are certainly distinctively Buddhistic (though a similar idea occurs in the later Yoga Sūtra, 1. 33). These are much deeper, and more difficult, matters.
i It is translated both from the older and the later form in my Buddhist Suttas, pp. 235, foll..
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
