TRANSFORMATION 193 



assumption upon the folklore and the general culture of 

 the Cingalese and the peoples of Further India. In 

 the Jatakas, or parables attributed to Gautama, we 

 have irrefragable witness of the teaching current from an 

 early period of Buddhist history. They are apologues, 

 most of them probably of much older date, which have 

 acquired sacredness by being fitted to alleged events 

 in the ministry of the Buddha. The master is repre- 

 sented as taking occasion from some remark made by 

 his disciples upon a passing occurrence to declare that 

 in a former birth the same things had happened to 

 them ; and in proof of his assertion he tells the tale. 

 The following may stand for a typical conclusion or 

 application. It is that of the cruel crane outwitted by 

 the crab : " When the Teacher had finished this dis- 

 course showing that * Not now only, O mendicants, 

 has this man been outwitted by the country robe- 

 maker, long ago he was outwitted in the same way/ he 

 established the connection and summed up the Jdtaka 

 by saying, * At that time he [the crane] was the 

 Jetavana robe-maker, the crab was the country robe- 

 maker, but the Genius of the Tree was I myself.' " l 

 To the personages of the tale is thus ascribed complete 

 identity with the Buddha and his contemporaries. 

 Transmigration, in short, as conceived in popular 

 Buddhism, was no product of the subtleties of Hindu 

 metaphysics. It was no refined philosophical doctrine. 

 It is undiscoverable in the Rig-Veda, the earliest 

 sacred book of the Sanskrit-speaking settlers in the 

 valleys of the Indus and the Ganges. Its ethical value 

 even, if we may judge from the Jdtakas, was of the 



1 Jdtaka, i. 95 (No. 38) ; Rhys Davids, Buddhist Birth Stories, 

 3*5. 



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