pointing out the virtues of the hero; these are commonly found in the first part or preamble of the tale. There are descriptive verses, containing pictures of fine scenery or of phenomena. Further, there are religious discourses, sometimes of considerable length, put in the mouth of the Bodhisattva; they have their place mostly at the end[18]. The rest consists in verses treating of facts in the story, and it is chiefly there that we find again the gâthâs of the corresponding Pâli Gâtakas. It is incontestable that in a great many cases Sûra worked on the same or a very similar stock of gâthâs as are contained in the Sacred Canon of the Southern Buddhists. For the sake of reference I have registered those parallel verses in a Synoptical Table, which is placed at the end of this book (pp. 337-340). Sometimes the affinity is so striking that one text will assist the interpretation and critical restitution of the other. Sûra's stanza, V, 11, for example, has not been invented by the author himself; it is a refined paraphrase in Sanskrit of some Prâkrit gâthâ of exactly the same purport as that which in Fausböll's Gâtaka III, p. 131, bears the number 158. By comparing pâda c in both, it is plain that in the Pâli text no ought to be read instead of vo[19]. It must have been sacred texts in some popular dialect, not in Sanskrit, that underly the elaborate and high-flown verses of Sûra. This is proved, among other things, by the mistake in XIX, 17, pointed out by Prof. Kern in the Various Readings he has appended to his edition.

As I have already remarked, each story is introduced by a leading sentence, expressing some religious maxim, which, according to Indian usage, is repeated again at the end as a conclusion to the story, being preceded by evam or tathâ, 'in this manner.' But, as a rule[20], the epilogues are not limited to that simple repetition. They often contain more, the practical usefulness of the story thus told being enhanced by the addition of other moral lessons, which may be illustrated by it, or by pointing out different subjects of religious discourses, in connection with which our tale may be of use. Most of these epilogues, in my opinion, are posterior to Sûra. Apart from the argument offered by some remarkable discrepancies in style and language and the monkish spirit pervading them, I think it highly improbable that, after the author had put at the head and at the end of each Gâtaka the moral maxim he desires to inculcate upon the minds of his readers by means of the account of a certain marvellous deed of the Bodhisattva, he should himself add different indications for other employments to serve homiletical purposes. It is more likely that these accessories are of later origin, and were added when the discourses of Sûra had gained so great a reputation as to be admitted to the Canon of Sacred Writings, and had come to be employed by the monks as a store of holy and edifying sermons for the purposes of religious instruction.

On account of these considerations, I have bracketed in my translation such part of the epilogues as seemed to me later interpolations. Yet I did not think it advisable to omit them. They are not without importance in themselves. They allow us an insight into the interior of the monasteries and to witness the monks preparing for preaching. Moreover, some of them contain precious information about holy texts of the Northern Buddhists, which are either lost or have not yet been discovered. In the epilogue of VIII there is even a textual quotation; likewise in that of XXX, where we find the words spoken by the Lord at the time of his Complete Extinction. As to XI, see my note on that epilogue. In XII and XXI similar sayings of holy books are hinted at.

Concerning the person of the author and his time, nothing certain is known. That he was called Ârya Sûra is told in the manuscripts, and is corroborated by Chinese tradition; the Chinese translation of the Gâtakamâlâ, made between 960 and 1127 A.D., bears Ârya Sûra on its title as the author's name (see Bunyiu Nanjio's Catalogue, No. 1312). Tibetan tradition, too, knows Sûra as a famous teacher, and as the author of our collection of stories. Târanâtha identifies him with Asvaghosha, and adds many more names by which the same great man should be known. It is, however, impossible that two works so entirely different in style and spirit as the Buddhakarita and the Gâtakamâlâ should be ascribed to one and the same author.

As to his time, Dr. d'Oldenburg observes that the terminus ante quem is the end of the 7th century A.D., since it seems that the Chinese traveller I-tsing speaks of our 'Garland of Birth-stories.' If No. 1349 of Bunyiu Nanjio's Catalogue of the Chinese Tripitaka, being a Sûtra on the fruits of Karma briefly explained by Ârya Sûra, is written by our author—and there seems to be no reasonable objection to this—Sûra must have lived before 434 A.D., when the latter work is said to have been translated into Chinese. This conclusion is supported by the purity and elegance of the language, which necessarily point to a period of a high standard of literary taste and a flourishing state of letters. Prof. Kern was induced by this reason to place Sûra approximately in the century of Kâlidâsa and Varâhamihira, but equally favourable circumstances may be supposed to have existed a couple of centuries earlier. I think, however, he is posterior to the author of the Buddhakarita. For other questions concerning the Gâtakamâlâ, which it would be too long to dwell upon here, I refer to Prof. Kern's preface and d'Oldenburg in Journ. Roy. As. Soc. 1893, pp. 306-309.

Târanâtha, the historian of Tibetan Buddhism, has preserved a legend which shows the high esteem in which the Gâtakamâlâ stands with the followers of the Buddha's Law. 'Pondering on the Bodhisattva's gift of his own body to the tigress, he [viz. Sûra] thought he could do the same, as it was not so very difficult. Once he, as in the tale, saw a tigress followed by her young, near starvation; at first he could not resolve on the self-sacrifice, but, calling forth a stronger faith in the Buddha, and writing with his own blood a prayer of seventy Slokas, he first gave the tigers his blood to drink, and, when their bodies had taken a little force, offered himself[21].' In this legend I recognise the sediment, so to speak, of the stream of emotion caused by the stimulating eloquence of that gifted Mahâyânist preacher on the minds of his co-religionists. Any one who could compose discourses such as these must have been capable of himself performing the extraordinary exploits of a Bodhisattva. In fact, something of the religious enthusiasm of those ancient apostles of the Mahâyâna who brought the Saddharma to China and Tibet pervades the work of Sûra, and it is not difficult to understand that in the