བསད་ནམས་ཀྱ་སྟབས་ཀྱ་རྟགས་པ་བརྗད་པ intro.6

intro.6

The central story and leading characters of The Exemplary Tale of Puṇyabala are found in various permutations throughout the Buddhist past-lives literature. The bare outline of the tale of the five young men, their debate over what is “best in the world” (Skt. loke anuttaraṃ in the Mahāvastu version), and their journey to a foreign land in order to test their differing theories, is shared by at least three other Buddhist texts that are each much shorter in length than the Puṇya­balāvadāna. These texts are the Puṇyavanta Jātaka, which forms a chapter of the Mahāvastu;³ a Tocharian version of the Puṇyavanta story;⁴ and a metric version that is included in the Bhadrakalpāvadāna.⁵ Apart from their shared narrative outline, these texts are not only notably different in composition and content from one another, but also from the Puṇya­balāvadāna. While the dialog and ensuing adventures of the five young men are the focus of the Puṇya­balāvadāna and of the Puṇyavanta Jātaka in the Mahāvastu, the Tocharian version devotes more than three-quarters of its content to the stories and dialogs preceding the young men’s journey, giving only seven and a half lines to their actual adventures.⁶