A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s5.196

v2.c19.s5.196

The Jātaka book was the inexhaustible source from which Buddhist poets, writers and compilers drew again and again. Thus the poet Sīlavaṃsa of Ava, in the 15th century, wrote a poem Buddhālaṃkāra, based on the Sumedha-Kathā in the Nidāna-Kathā. About the same time the poet Raṭṭhasāra of Ava produced a few poetical versions of Jātakas. Tipiṭakālaṃkāra, who was born in 1578 in Burma, wrote a poetical version of the Vessantara-Jātaka when he was a fifteen-year old novice.¹ Even the Rājādhirāja-Vilāsinī, a prose work written at the request of the Burmese king Bodōpayā, who ascended the throne in 1782, takes the Jātaka book as its chief source, though the author, in order to show his erudition, diligently used the entire literature from the Suttas down to the latest commentaries, as well as all sorts of learned Pāli and Sanskrit works on grammar, astronomy and other sciences.¹