Buddhist Birth-Stories; Jataka Tales: The Commentarial Introd, Entitled Nidanakatha; The Story of the Lineage, Translated from V. Fausböll's Ed, of ... Ed, By Mrs. Rhys Davids (Classic Reprint)

TlHIS essay and the following translation were J- published in 1880 as a volume inT riibner sO riental 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 theB uddhist 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 translation 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.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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