Budhhist Birth Stories (Jataka Tales)

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These essays, along with the subsequent translation, were originally published in 1880 as a part of Trubner's Oriental Series. The volume not only included these essays but also featured the initial segments of a more extensive work-a translation of the Jataka, a collection of over 550 folklore tales that constitutes a part of the Buddhist canonical scriptures. Each tale is presented in prose, providing an explanation for a much older poem consisting of two or more lines. The verses contain allusions that require the elucidation provided in the accompanying prose. Additionally, each story is enriched with an episode purportedly from the life of the founder of what is now referred to as Buddhism.

IT IS WELL KNOWN THAT AMONGST the Buddhist Scriptures there is one book in which a large number of old stories, fables, and fairy-tales lie enshrined in an edifying commentary; and have thus been preserved for the study and amusement of later times. How this came about is not at present quite certain. The belief of orthodox Buddhists on the subject is this:-The Buddha, as occasion arose, was accustomed throughout his long career to explain and comment on the events happening around him by telling of similar events that had occurred in his own previous births.