Theory of Government in Ancient India (Post-Vedic) c11.26

c11.26

A similar sentiment about caste-prerogatives is evident in the Jâtakas, the stories of the Buddha's previous births, one of the noblest monuments of Buddhist literature. Tradition will have it that 550 Jâtaka stories were taken by the royal missionary Malinda to Ceylon during the reign of Aśoka in the middle of the third century B.C. They were translated from the Pâli into Singhalese and back into Pâli by Buddhaghoṣa in the fifth century A.D. It is in this translation that the Jâtakas have come down to us. But in accordance with the tradition they were long believed to reflect the thought and conditions of the Buddha's time or the period immediately following. Recent research, however, has considerably brought down their dates. "The Jâtaka book," remarks Prof. Keith, "is a strange conglomerate of old and new verses with new prose; some of its tales, as we know from Buddhist sculpture and a stray citation or two, go back to the Aśokan epoch or shortly after; as folklore its contents are often of undeniable age, but as Buddhist fables their antiquity is uncertain."² The bulk of the Jâtaka stories may be presumed to have existed about the commencement of the Christian era, though some are later still. In numerous passages, they breathe a Purāṇic atmosphere. All the more it is interesting to compare their tone and ideas with those of the contemporaneous Brahmanical literature. In the Jātakas caste is assumed to exist. The institution was too powerful to be ignored or uprooted. But the exaggerated claims based on birth are not admitted. In the Dasabrāhmaṇa Jātaka, a debate between two young men on birth or action as the basis of caste, is referred to Gautama who declares that the followers of pastoral, agricultural, industrial, commercial or martial pursuits could not be called Brāhmaṇas. Here the obvious allusion is to those who claimed Brahmanic privileges on the score of caste but who had renounced scholastic or priestly callings. The Jātakas do not proclaim like the Brahmanic dharmaśāstras that one of the prime duties of the king is to enforce the rules of the social order and set every one to the performance of his caste function. Times without number it is emphasised that caste is useless for Nirvāṇa, the summum bonum of life. In many stories again, Brāhmaṇas play a rather ignominious role.¹ From the point of view of governmental theory, it is highly significant that in the Jātakas Kṣatriyas are generally mentioned before Brāhmaṇas. Here, as Fick observes about the Pāli texts as a whole, the term Khattiya is to be understood that for the text of the Jātakas, we must, strictly speaking, be satisfied with the time of Vaṭṭagāmaṇi, 88-76 B.C., when the Buddhist canon was reduced to writing. The Jātakas or stories of the Buddha's previous births, and Avadānas, deeds of heroism or their narration, sometimes as Bodhisattva Avadāna, identical with Jātakas, formed the most popular theme for Buddhist writers. I-tsing (tr. Takakusu, p. 166) testifies to the popularity of Jātakas in the 7th century.