100 JOURNAL, B.A.S. (CEYLON). [Vol. VIII. 



THE MATTER. 



Mr. Rhys Davids" valuable work — The first paper* was 

 called " A Review of Mr. Rhys Davids' Introduction," and 

 began as follows : 



Mr. Rhys Davids, in the introduction to his first volume 

 of "Buddhist Birth-stories," published in 1880, seems to 

 have designed to give the English reader a thorough insight 

 into the character of the Jataka stories as a whole, and a 

 definite acquaintance with the contents of some typical 

 specimens of them ; and at the same time to describe the 

 place which the book holds in general literature, and to 

 show how largely, in his opinion, European literature has 

 been indebted to this Buddhist work and to works connected 

 with it. In doing this he has brought together a consider- 

 able amount of curious and interesting information, and has 

 made his introduction a very readable, though at the same 

 time a fairly accurate and scholarly piece of work. 



In the rest of the volume he has given a translation of 

 the Pali Preface to the Jataka Book, and of nearly forty of 

 the tales. Thus, although for the present he has stopped 

 there, he may fairly be said to have supplied all that the 

 general reader need know, and to have enabled those who 

 wish to make a particular study of this book, to do so with 

 a good start, and on the right lines. This Society, then, 

 having applied itself, in some sense, to such a study, some 

 acquaintance with Mr. Davids' work is, I venture to say, 

 an indispensable part of our equipment. 



Meaning of Birth-story.— According to the Buddhist belief, 

 every man living has entered on his present life in succession 

 to a vast number of previous lives, in any one of which he 

 may have been a man— king, monk, or goatherd — an animal, 

 a goblin, or deity, as the case might be. For the mass of 

 men, these previous lives have left no trace on memory, but 

 a Buddha remembers them all, and not his own only, but 

 the previous births also of other men. And Gotama, so the 

 tradition runs, was in the habit of explaining the facts of 

 the present in the lives of those about him, by what they 

 had been or done in other births, and of illustrating his own 



* By the Editor 



