A History of Sanskrit Literature c13.s2.7

c13.s2.7

A further question of importance in determining the age of the *Rāmāyaṇa* is its relation to Buddhistic literature. Now, the story of Rāma is found in a somewhat altered form in one of the Pāli Birth-Stories, the *Daçaratha Jātaka*. As this version confines itself to the first part of Rāma's adventures, his sojourn in the forest, it might at first sight seem to be the older of the two. There is, however, at least an indication that the second part of the story, the expedition to Laṅkā, was also known to the author of the *Jātaka*; for while Vālmīki's poem concludes with the reunion of Rāma and Sītā, the *Jātaka* is made to end with the marriage of the couple after the manner of fairy tales, there being at the same time traces that they were wedded all along in the original source of the legend. Moreover, a verse from the old part of the *Rāmāyaṇa* (vi. 128) actually occurs in a Pāli form embedded in the prose of this *Jātaka*.