The Jataka Or Stories Of The Buddha’S Former Births Volume 5th

About the Book P:-The Pali work, entitled ' the Jataka ' is a book of six volumes. The first volume of which is now presented to the reader in an English form contains 550. Jatakas or Birth-stories, which are arranged in 22 nipatas or books. This division is roughly founded on the number of verses (gathas) which are quoted in each story; thus the first book contains 150 stories, each of which only quotes one verse, the second 100, each of which quotes two, the third and fourth 50 each, which respectively quotes 3 and 4, and so on the twenty-first with 5 stories, each of which quotes 80 verses, and the twenty-second with 10 stories, each quoting a still larger number. Each story opens with a preface called the paccuppannavatthu or ' story of the present ', which relates the particular circumstances in the Buddha's life which led him to tell the birth-story and thus reveal some event in the long series of his previous existences as a bodhisattva or a being destined to attain Buddha-ship. At the end there is always given a short summary, where the Buddha identifies the different actors in the story in their present births at the time of his discourse, —it being an essential condition of the book that the Buddha possesses the same power as that which Pythagoras claimed but with a far more extensive range, since he could remember all the past events in every being's previous existences as well as in his own.

Edizione: 1905