106 



journal ? r.a.s. (ceylon). 



[Vol. VIII. 



specimens of the most interesting part of the contents of 

 this class of stories. 



Then there are some six, which are primarily tales of 

 travel and commercial life. From these the reader may 

 learn how to detect the approach of rain (1), or the neigh- 

 bourhood of water (2) ; how to fit out and guide and bivouac 

 a caravan in a tropical desert (1 and 2), the comparative 

 advantages of being the first to travel a road, and of coming 

 after other traders (1); the tricks of pedlars and their 

 rules of trade (3) ; how to detect gold (3), how to light fires, 

 and to escape jungle fires ; all sorts of petty roadside trades 

 (4) ; the dangers of bad water (10) and poisonous fruit 

 (12), and how to detect each. All the stories in which these 

 occur are made to bear more or less directly on some point 

 of general or of Buddhistic morals, but their intrinsic interest 

 and probable origin, as it seems to me, are in the connection 

 I have shown. 



The one story which may be called in part a fairy-tale 

 is Losaka Jataka (41), about which I have something 

 further to say. It is thoroughly Buddhistic in application. 

 For defrauding a brother monk of his meal, through envy, 

 the unhappy hero is born a great number of times in 

 various infra-human conditions of misery and starvation. 

 This ill-luck or gainlessness pursues him even in a human 

 condition ; but in the midst of it a piece of merit, acquired 

 ages before, suddenly bears fruit, and secures him the 

 society of a series of goddesses in a series of sea-palaces. 



I have touched on some 38 stories, and though the classes 

 in which I have grouped them run, of course, into one 

 another, while some tales contain nothing at all, still it 

 may be said roughly that there remain 12 which appear to 

 be primarily Buddhistic. 



Putting aside such of these as are trifling, or repetitions 

 of others, the Makhaddva Jataka (9) stands in a peculiar 

 position. It is a short and very simple, but curiously dig- 

 nified account of the retirement of King Makhadeva from 

 the pomp of royalty to a religious life on the appearance of 

 his first white hair. There is nothing in this that is incon- 

 sistent with Buddhism, but it belongs to that part of Bud- 

 dhism which it received and retained unchanged from 

 Brahmanism. There are traces in the story of the division 



