Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c2.1

c2.1

The Jātakas, on which the whole of the present work is based, are, as is well-known, a collection of stories included in the Khuddaka-Nikāya of the Suttapiṭaka of the Pāli Canon. These stories, as edited by Fousböll, number 547. But as in some of these numbers, several stories are included, while others only contain references to later Jātakas, and also as sometimes the same stories recur in different versions, the figure 547 does not agree exactly with the actual number of the stories.¹ The Culla-Niddesa gives the number as 500 (pañca-jātaka-satāni).² The collection is obviously incomplete. It does not, and could not, include all the stories current at the time of its final redaction or compilation, probably in the 5th century A.D.;³ neither does it include all the episodes still to be seen on the remnants of the Bharhut and Sanchi, Andhra, and other railings,⁴ nor could all Jātaka-like stories to be found in the various Buddhist and non-Buddhist works.⁵