The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c10.59

c10.59

On the other hand, there is a point on which we believe we may already risk a categorical affirmation : we mean the manifest divergence which is seen between the version of the verse text of the *Jātaka* (nº 1) and that of the prose commentary (nº 7). This divergence is not to-day remarked for the first time (²): what we have here is only one more striking experimental demonstration of it. Read afresh with reference to our list the text of Fausböll's edition (V, pp. 37 sqq.), and you will quickly perceive that the editor of the commentary in its present form knew a state of the legend analogous to that reflected in the works numbered 8 to 11; that, if he did not follow these latter right to the end, it was because he was hindered at each moment by his text, whose ancient particulars held him back, *nolens volens*, on the incline down which he asked nothing better than to glide; and that finally he applied himself as well as he could to inserting between the lines of the ancient story ornaments borrowed from the later legend. Henceforth you will hold the secret of the strange liberties which he takes with the letter of the stanzas; and you will have only to note point by point, as they occur, the most flagrant of his offences. You will smile at the palpable cunning with which, from the first line (p. 37, l. 1), he transfers the name of the elephant, Chaddanta, to the lake near which the latter dwells, and a