T.W. Rhys Davids - Buddhist Birth Stories

Trbners Oriental Series

BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES

Trbners Oriental Series

BUDDHISM

In 16 Volumes

BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES

THE OLDEST COLLECTION OF FOLK-LORE EXTANT

T W RHYS DAVIDS

First published in 1880 by

Trbner & Co Ltd

Reprinted in 2000 by

Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

First issued in paperback 2013

1880 TW Rhys Davids

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library

Buddhist Birth Stories

ISBN 978-0-415-24476-3 (Hbk)

ISBN 978-0-415-84631-8 (Pbk)

Buddhism: 16 Volumes

ISBN 978-0-415-24286-8

Trbners Oriental Series

ISBN 978-0-415-23188-6

BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES;

OR,

JTAKA TALES.

THE OLDEST COLLECTION OF FOLK-LORE EXTANT:

BEING

THE JTAKATTHAVAAN,

For the first time Edited in the Original Pli

BY V. FAUSBLL,

AND TRANSLATED

BY T. W. RHYS DAVIDS.

TRANSLATION.

VOLUME I.

LONDON:

TRBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL.

1880.

[All rights reserved.]

TO

GEHEIM-RATH PROFESSOR DOCTOR

STENZLER

MY FIRST GUIDE IN ORIENTAL STUDIES

IN CONGRATULATION ON HIS DOCTOR JUBILUM

AND IN DEEP RESPECT FOR HIS PROFOUND SCHOLARSHIP

THIS WORK IS DEDICATED BY

HIS GRATEFUL PUPIL

THE AUTHOR.

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 preserved 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 lifetime 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 learnt and repeated by his disciples; and immediately after his death 550 of them were gathered together in one collection, called the Book of the 550 Jtakas or Births; the commentary to which gives for each Jtaka, or Birth Story, an account of the event in Gotamas life which led to his first telling that particular story. Both text and commentary were then handed down intact, and in the Pli language in which they were composed, to the time of the Council of Patna (held in or about the year 250 B.C.); and they were carried in the following year to Ceylon by the great missionary Mahinda. There the commentary was translated into Sinhalese, the Aryan dialect spoken in Ceylon; and was re-translated into its present form in the Pli language in the fifth century of our era. But the text of the Jtaka stories themselves has been throughout preserved in its original Pli 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 immediately after the Buddhas death, is not only not supported, but is contradicted by the evidence of those hooks themselves. It may be necessary to state what that belief is, in order to show the importance 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 Pli 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, riddles, and comic and moral stories, of which the Buddhist Collectionknown as the Jtaka Bookconsists, 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