No. 28.— -1884.] first fifty jAtakas. 



123 



which more or less begins in the same way as every atita 

 vattku does, by " Baranasi, prince Brahmadatta," &c. Gathas 

 and comments upon them constitute the higher part of the 

 kathas ; and the stories support what the gathas inculcate. 



"It is plain, then, that the Jatakas, as they exist, are a 

 series of sermons, ready to hand, and to be preached to 

 mixed audiences. A part of a gatha is first recited, and 

 the attention of an audience is thus called to what is 

 coming, A paccuppanna vattku points out the particular 

 topic of the gatha recited. Faith in Buddha Gotama is 

 awakened, and a ground-basis for the chaunt of the gatha 

 in full is thus prepared. Then, in explaining the gatha, 

 the preacher shows his power of scholasticism. The ordi- 

 nary audience listens on, half-puzzled and half-struck by 

 what the mind considers to be profound and mysterious ; 

 and, moved by the incomprehensible, it works it up into 

 the marvellous, and obtains from this a passive intellectual 

 enjoyment. The preacher proceeds with an energy of his 

 own. The strain on the mental power of the audience is 

 now at its height, when abstruse comments upon a gatha 

 are abstrusely bul eloquently explained. This is succeeded 

 by the narration of the simple popular atita vattku. There 

 is thus a sudden transition from the abstruse to the simple, 

 from the philosophical to the popular element. Such a 

 transition produces a contrast. The parallelism, which 

 runs between the two stories, and which constitutes the 

 anusa?idki between them, is thus combined with a contrast. 

 And parallelism and contrast are the foundation upon which 

 all sesthetic pleasure, whether intellectual or emotional, is 

 built. The transition from the comments on a gatha affords 

 relief to the mind of the audience. 



"When a Mahrattha preacher, for instance, dwells at 

 length on a nirupana, his audience asks him to descend into 

 an anusandhana. When he has a short, cursory nirupana, 

 and a long tedious anumndhana, he is criticized by his audi- 

 ence as they go home, and has a chance of seeing his audience 

 diminished. An audience cannot be trifled with. Pleasure 

 it must have. The number of lay gentlemen and ladies 

 attending a convent gave it importance. Such attendance 

 is specially preached in some Jatakas. There were neces- 

 sarily two or more convents in a large town, as Hwen-thsang 



