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JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). [Vol. VIII. 



(or Buddha in course of development) lived under that 

 Buddha. Further, since every Buddha devotes a whole 

 series of existences to the acquirement or exercise of 

 perfection in certain elements of the Buddha character, 

 there is a treatise called Cariya Pitakarh, which narrates 

 the lives in which he who was to be Gotama acquired 

 generosity, goodness, and the rest of the ten Pdramitd. 

 This amount of Jataka material was essential to a com- 

 plete history of the Buddha ; but there is, besides this, 

 scattered here and there in the Pitaka, a considerable 

 n umber of narratives, by G6tama himself, of his previous 

 births, told in illustration of what he happened to be 

 t eaching. This, then, may reasonably be supposed to have 

 been the nucleus round which gathered the stories of less 

 genuine pretensions. 



It is certain, apart from all tradition, that some of the 

 stories which at present form our collection were popular 

 under the name of Jataka in the 3rd ceDtury, B.C. In the 

 carvings of the great stone railings around the dagabas 

 of Barhut are to be seen still very rich and vivid illustra- 

 tions of scenes from our J ataka stories. And on some of 

 them are written, as I have myself read in the Calcutta 

 Museum, the names of the Jatakas represented. The 

 interesting paper devoted by our President to this subject 

 abundantly proves the point. Mr. Rhys Davids thus 

 expresses his own opinion : — " The most probable explana- 

 tion is," he says, " that it was due to the religious faith of 

 the Indian Buddhists of the 3rd or 4th century B.C., who 

 not only repeated a number of fables, parables, and stories 

 ascribed to the Buddha, but gave them a peculiar sacredness, 

 and a special religious signification, by identifying the best 

 character in each with the Buddha himself in previous 

 births." By this means, what had been mere tales became 

 birth-stories of Buddha. This must certainly have been 

 some time before the Bharhut rails were carved. Ancl ? 

 probably, stories thus sacred and popularly accepted were 

 brought together into a collection before the Council of 

 Vesali. 



The plan of prefacing these stories by the introductory 

 stories, or stories of the present, may have been justified by 

 some genuine traditions as to the occasions when the Buddha 



