A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s3.t2.187

v2.c19.s3.t2.187

That this is actually the case, and that some of the Jātakas, even as regards the contents of the prose, belonged to Buddhist tradition in the second or third century B.C., is proved by the reliefs on the stone walls around the Stūpas of Bharhut and Sānchi;² these reliefs are extremely important from the point of view of the history of the Jātakas. These precious Buddhist monuments depict scenes from the Jātakas, including scenes which occur only in the prose, in fact in Bharhut the titles of the Jātakas are written above the reliefs.¹ These reliefs prove, then, that a number of narratives, which are also to be found in the Jātaka book, were in the 2nd (perhaps even in the 3rd) century B.C. technically called “Jātaka,” and were regarded as Bodhisatta stories. They prove that even at that early time many worldly narratives, which were found already current by the Buddhist monks, were “Buddhistised,” that accordingly they must have been known in India long before, and possibly belonged to the pre-Buddhist period.