Stories of the Buddha- Being Selections From the Jataka

THE collection of about 550 stories, entitled Jataka," or The Jatakas," is included in the second of the threefold Pali (Buddhist) Canon, known as the Pitakas. It was first published in roman character in the excellent critical edition compiled by the Danish scholar, Victor Fausböll: London, 1877-1896. " About 550" is not very precise, but whereas, in the collection, a few stories are just duplicates, a few others consist, under one title, of two, three or more stories, and hence "about 550" is near enough. The appeal of the stories being wide, and their specific framework also of great interest, a translation was felt to be a desideratum. The first two volumes were associated on their title-page with the name of my husband as translator, and in 1880 he produced The Buddhist Birthstories, Vol. I, published in Trubner's Oriental Series, London. In this there were only the first forty stories, but preceding these was a translation of the long intro ductory talk," entitled Nidana-katha, "Talk on the Origin," or on the Connected Basis." There " after he handed over the completion of his work, actually the entire collection, to the eminent In dologist, Edward Cowell, that it might be more quickly accomplished by a group of workers. Even so, and after many years' interval, it was a matter of ten years more, 1897-1907, that was needed for the publication, in six volumes, of the 550 stories, the translators being Messrs. (Robert, now Lord) Chalmers, Rouse, Francis and Neil, Cowell himself also contributing a portion. This translation, ex clusive of the Nidana-katha, was produced by th Cambridge University Press. My husband's transla tion of the Nidana-katha, with his critical discussion on the nature and history of the Jatakas as canonica material, and on the problem of the migration of some of them into or from other countries, has beer reissued lately in the Broadway Translation Series (London: Routledge's).
To publish a selection from so great a whole, of materials so diversely attractive, has appealed to purveyors of books ere now. Two of such known to me are that from the Cambridge University Press (1916), of 114 stories, selected by Messrs. H. T. Francis and E. J. Thomas, and that in Die Märchen der Weltliteratur, compiled by Mrs. E. Lüders (E. Diederich: Jena, 1921), entitled "Buddhistiche Märchen," to the number of 70. Yet one more is a modest volume of selected stories by my friend, Miss Marie Shedlock, intended for telling to chil dren: Buddhist Birthstories: Routledge, 1910. To this my husband wrote a preface, in which he shares, with those of us who have it not, his memory of the telling of the stories by the monks of Ceylon to the people on warm full-moon holy-day nights. The stories are naturally told in Singhalese, but the verses will be chanted in Pali, and then turned into Singhalese. I am not so fortunate as to have ex perienced the keeping up, down to the present, of this venerable custom many centuries old. But my students from that island are capable of intoning for me Jataka verses in a curious chant, strongly suggestive of responses or scripture as chanted in Catholic churches, plus a touch of Oriental querulous ness in the cadences.