Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c2.24

c2.24

But, as we said, it is the material, the contents of the stories which are of more importance than the language of the prose in which they are written. And we cannot deny that the major part of the stories in the collection preserves older material. Even Dr. Winternitz has to admit in the face of archaeological evidence of a compelling character, that in the prose, too, much that is old have been preserved.¹ This evidence comes from the precious monuments, the Stūpas of Barhut and Sāñchī, of the second or third century B.C.² The importance of the reliefs on the stone-walls around these stūpas, from the point of view of the history of the Jātakas, can hardly be overestimated. On these reliefs are depicted scenes from the Jātakas³ including scenes which occur only in the prose. Not only this. Sometimes even the titles of the Jātakas are inscribed, which are sometimes the same as those in the Jātaka book, but which in other cases differ. These reliefs then prove, as admitted by Dr. Winternitz, that a number of stories, which are also to be found in the Jātaka collection, were in the second, perhaps even in the third century B.C., technically called ‘Jātakas’ and were regarded as Bodhisatta stories⁴ and that accordingly they must have been known in India long before, and possibly belonged to the pre-Buddhist period.⁵