Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c2.42

c2.42

The importance of the Jātakas can hardly be under-estimated. They are simple stories, no doubt. The general tendency among scholars was, and perhaps still is, sceptical about the usefulness of such stories as a source of history. Sooner this scepticism goes away, better will be the understanding of history. All folk-tales, originating as they do among the vast folk, must reflect their life. Prof. Lacote, who devoted many years of his life in the study of Indian tales, opines that the Indian tales are for its history, religious, literary and social, of an importance of which no comparison with other literatures could possibly give an adequate idea.⁶ The Jātakas are of inestimable value, not only as regards literature and art, but also from the point of view of the history of civilization¹. Through all these centuries the Jātakas have enriched, directly or indirectly, the literature of many other peoples and have therefore been of immense importance in universal literature.² Similarly Indian and non-Indian art was aslo enriched by the Jātakas. "They belong to the oldest subjects that were pictorially represented in India, and to-day they are still favourite themes for sculpture and painting in all Buddhist countries."³ They are found in the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C. on the stone walls of Barhut and Sāñchī, in the 2nd century A.D. on those of Amarāvatī, and still later in the caves of Ajaṇṭā. Fa-hien in the 5th century A.D. saw in Abhayagiri in Ceylon five hundred Jātakas represented by figures. Hiuen-Tsiang saw many Stūpas on which the Jātakas were represented. And the temples of Boro-Budur in Jāvā (9th century) of Pagan in Burmā (13th century) and of Sukhodaya in Siām (14th century) are decorated by beautiful reliefs containing Jātaka illustrations.⁴