The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c10.2.4

c10.2.4

Tradition will have it that these stories were taken by the royal missionary Mahinda to Ceylon during the reign of Aśoka in the third century B.C. They were translated from the Pâli into Simhalese and back into Pâli by Buddhaghośa in the fifth century A.D. It is in this translation of a translation that the Jâtakas have come down to us. In accordance with the tradition they were long believed to mirror the thought and conditions which prevailed before the time of the Buddha. Richard Fick assigned them, as a whole, to the age of Buddha, remarking that "many of the Jâtakas are undoubtedly very old and belong, so far as their origin is concerned, to the pre-Buddhistic period."' Rhys Davids inclines definitely to the pre-Buddhistic period.² In the last generation of scholars, Max Müller alone perceived that for the text of the Jâtakas we must, strictly speaking, be satisfied with the time of Vattagâmani, 88—76 B.C.³ In the light of the latest researches, the position may be summed up in the words of Keith: "The Jâtaka book is a strange conglomeration 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."⁴ So, the Jâtaka material is to be treated as partly pre-Mauryan and partly post-Mauryan.