where we often find an extreme standard held up in the hope of producing an impression that may be useful in less extreme cases. To offer the other cheek to whosoever shall strike our right cheek, to give up our cloak to him who takes away our coat, to declare that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God, are all lessons which we also take cum grano salis. They ask for much in the hope that something may be given. That there is danger too in this mode of teaching cannot be denied. We are told that Ârya Sûra, in order to follow the example of Buddha in a former birth, threw himself in this life before a starving tigress to be devoured. Let us hope that this too was only a Gâtaka.

When once a taste for these moralising stories had arisen, probably owing to Buddha's daily intercourse with the common people, their number grew most rapidly. The supply was unlimited, all that was required was the moral application, the Haec fabula docet. The Buddhists give their number as 550. The earliest are probably those which are found in different parts of the Buddhist Canon. In the Kariyâ-pitaka there is a collection of thirty-five stories of the former lives of Buddha, in each of which he acquired one of the ten Pâramitâs or Great Perfections which fit a human being for Buddhahood[3]. A similar collection is found in the Buddhavamsa[4], which contains an account of the life of the coming Buddha, the Bodhisat, in the various characters which he filled during the periods of the twenty-four previous Buddhas.

The Gâtaka stories are therefore at least as old as the compilation of the Buddhist Canon at the Council of Vesâli, about 377 b.c.[5] It was at that Council that the great schism took place, and that the ancient Canon was rearranged or disarranged. Among the books thus tampered with is mentioned the Gâtaka, which therefore must be considered as having existed, and formed part of the old Canon before the Council of Vesâli. This is what the Dîpavamsa (V, 32) says on the subject:

'The Bhikkhus of the Great Council settled a doctrine contrary (to the true Faith). Altering the original text they made another text. They transposed Suttas which belonged to one place (of the collection) to another place; they destroyed the true meaning of the Faith, in the Vinaya and in the five collections (of the Suttas).... Rejecting single passages of the Suttas and of the proposed Vinaya, they composed other Suttas and another Vinaya which had (only) the appearance (of the genuine ones). Rejecting the following texts, viz. the Parivâra, which is the abstract of the contents (of the Vinaya), the six sections of the Abhidhamma, the Patisambhidâ, the Niddesa, and some portions of the Gâtaka, they composed new ones.'

Whatever else this may prove with regard to the way in which the ancient Canon was preserved, it shows at all events that Gâtakas existed before the Vesâli Council as an integral portion of the sacred Canon, and we learn at the same time that it was possible even then to compose new chapters of that canon, and probably also to add new Gâtaka stories.

Whether we possess the text of the Gâtaka in exactly that form in which it existed previous to the Council of Vesâli in 377 b.c. is another question. Strictly speaking we must be satisfied with the time of Vattagâmani in whose reign, 88-76 b.c., writing for literary purposes seems to have become more general in India, and the Buddhist Canon was for the first time reduced to writing.

What we possess is the Pâli text of the Gâtaka as it has been preserved in Ceylon. The tradition is that these 550 Gâtaka stories, composed in Pâli, were taken to Ceylon by Mahinda, about 250 b.c., that the commentary was there translated into Singhalese, and that the commentary was retranslated into Pâli by Buddhaghosha, in the fifth century A.D. It is in this commentary alone that the text of the Gâtakas has come down to us. This text has been edited by Dr. Fausböll. He has distinguished in his edition between three component elements, the tale, the frame, and the verbal interpretation. This text, of which the beginning was translated in 1880 by Prof. Rhys Davids, is now being translated by Mr. R. Chalmers, Mr. W. R. D. Rouse, Mr. H. T. Francis and Mr. R. A. Neil, and the first volume of their translation has appeared in 1895 under the able editorship of Professor Cowell.

As Professor Speyer has explained, the Gâtakamâlâ, the Garland of Birth-stories, which he has translated, is a totally different work. It is a Sanskrit rendering of only thirty-four Gâtakas ascribed to Ârya Sûra. While the Pâli Gâtaka is written in the plainest prose style, the work of Ârya Sûra has higher pretensions, and is in fact a kind of kâvya, a work of art. It was used by the Northern Buddhists, while the Pâli Gâtaka belongs to the Canon of the Southern Buddhists. The date of Ârya Sûra is difficult to fix. Târanâtha (p. 90) states that Sûra was known by many names, such as Asvaghosha, Mâtriketa, Pitriketa, Durdarsha (sic), Dharmika-subhûti, Matikitra. He also states that towards the end of his life Sûra, was in correspondence with king Kanika (Kanishka?), and that he began to write the hundred Gâtakas illustrating Buddha's acquirement of the ten Pâramitâs (see p. xiv), but died when he had finished only thirty-four. It is certainly curious that our Gâtakamâlâ contains thirty-four Gâtakas[6]. If therefore we could rely on Târanâtha, Ârya Sûra, being identical with Asvaghosha, the author of the Buddhakarita, would have lived in the first century of our era. He is mentioned as a great authority on metres (Târanâtha, p. 181), and he certainly handles his metres with great skill. But dates are always the weak point in the history of Indian Literature. Possibly the study of Tibetan Literature, and a knowledge of the authorities on which Târanâtha relied, may throw more light hereafter on the date of Sûra and Asvaghosha.

F. Max Müller.

Oxford, October, 1895.

CONTENTS.