Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c2.20

c2.20

This is not to say that all the *Jātaka* stories, or even the *Gāthās* as embodied in our collection, were current at the time of the Buddha. It may however be conceded that the major portion was. It is also probable that even the verse-*Jātaka* of the canon, if it existed as an independent work contained a smaller number of *Gāthās*. The number seems to have gradually increased. And as regards prose³, too, it is the work of the later-day commentator, say of the 5th century A.D. But this is about the language with which we have no concern at present. We have to see what kind of material has been used in that prose. Dr. Winternitz⁴ has analysed the different kinds and forms of narrative composition as represented in the *Jātaka*-collection: (*a*) First, there are narratives in prose with fable verses, fairy-tale stanzas, or aphorisms inserted here and there. Prose and verses easily join with one another, and together form such a beautiful whole that we cannot but assume that in these cases the *Jātakaṭṭhavaṇṇanā* used good old traditions for the prose also; (*b*) secondly, there are Ballads in dialogue form, in a mixture of conversational verses and narrative stanzas. The prose which we find in the collection is as a rule, in these cases, the entirely superfluous and insipid fabrication of some commentator, and as a matter of fact is not infrequently in actual contradiction to the verses; (*c*) thirdly, there are longer narratives, beginning in prose and continued in verse, or in which prose narration alternates with narrative and conversational verses. Here prose is indispensable, but the prose of the collection is not a faithful copy of the original prose, but greatly enlarged on, and disfigured, by commentatorial additions; (*d*) fourthly, there are collections of sayings on any subject and, lastly (*e*) regular epics or epic fragments. In the latter two cases, the ose in the book is again a superfluous commentary, and mostly spiritless to the bargain.