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BUDDHIST INDIA
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the advantage of a good character, and it was necessary to choose a short title for it, it was called the 'Lion Jātaka or the Jackal Jātaka' or even the 'Good Character Jātaka.' 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 Jātaka' as the Tortoise Jātaka'; and it is referred to accordingly under both those names. must always have been difficult, if not impossible, to fix upon a short title which should at once characterise the lesson to be taught, and the personages through whose acts it was taught. And different names would thus arise, and become interchangeable.” '
It
1
We should not be surprised, therefore, to find in this one instance the catchwords of the verse used also as a title. And it is a most fortunate thing that in this solitary instance the words of the verse are extant in an inscription of the third century B.C.
The next evidence we have to consider is that of
the Jātaka Book itself. The canonical work, containing the verses only (and therefore quite unintelligible without a commentary), is very rare even in MSS., and has not yet been edited. It would be very interesting to see what it has to say about the titles, and whether it gives any various readings in the verses.
What we have, in the well-known edition by Professor Fausböll, is the commentary. We do not know its date. But as we know of no commentaries of this sort written before the fifth century A.D. they were all handed down till then by word of 1 Buddhist Birth Stories, p. lxi.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
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