Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c2.7

c2.7

Every single Jātaka, in the Pāli collection, consists of the following parts: (a) An introductory story, i.e., 'story of the present' (paccuppannavatthu), which relates on what occasion the Buddha himself told the monks the Jātaka in question; (b) Atītavatthu, i.e., 'story of the past' in which a tale of the former births of the Buddha, in other words, a Bodhisatta story, or a story relating to later Buddhist dogmatics, is told; (c) the Gāthās which, as a rule, constitute the Jātaka of the Akkhāna type and which, like the story of the past, are supplemented by the abhisaṃbuddhagāthās as these later are generally termed;⁶ (d) short commentary (veyyākaraṇa) in which the Gāthās are explained word for word; and (e) the story of the identification (samodhāna) in which, finally, the personages of the story of the past are identified, by the Buddha himself, with those of the 'story of the present', and the psychological effect of the discourse on the mind of the listeners is described. These are the different parts which form a single Jātaka in this huge narrative work, the Jātakaṭṭhavaṇṇanā. again, we have chosen to take our stand, for drawing up a picture India, only on the ‘story of the past’ (prose) and the Gāthās or verses both easily join one another and together form a beautiful whole (Atīta- The stories of the present (Paccuppannavatthu) are left aside, for th sometimes only duplicates of the ‘stories of the past,’ sometimes foolis entirely worthless inventions, and at best narratives which have been bor from other parts of the Canon, e. g., Vinayapiṭaka, Suttanipāta, A or from other commentaries, and are not therefore as valuable as the Jātakas, or the ‘stories of the past.’ Similarly the commentary (veyyāka and the ‘connexion’ (samodhāna), being solely the work of the late compiler, are left out.¹