Jataka tales

Form

Each Jataka has a fixed structure: a story of the present, in which an incident prompts the Buddha to recount a past life; the story of the past; the verses, which are the canonical portion; and an identification in which the characters are matched to people in the present.

The Bodhisatta — the Buddha in a previous birth — appears as a king, merchant, ascetic, brahmin, or as an animal: a monkey, elephant, deer, quail or hare. The stories illustrate the perfections he accumulated over incalculable time before his final birth.

Origins

Much of the material is older than Buddhism and is shared with the wider Indian narrative tradition — the same fables appear in the Panchatantra and elsewhere. The Buddhist collection frames existing folk material with an identification that makes it doctrinally useful.

Only the verses are canonical in the Pali tradition; the prose narratives belong to the commentary, which is why the stories can differ across versions while the verses remain fixed.

Diffusion

The Jatakas travelled with Buddhism across Asia and were carved, painted and retold everywhere it went — the reliefs at Bharhut and Sanchi, the murals at Ajanta, the panels at Borobudur. Several stories passed into non-Buddhist collections and moved west, and versions of some appear in Aesop and in medieval European fable, though the routes of transmission are argued over.

Value

For social history the Jatakas are exceptionally useful. Because their setting is ordinary life rather than court or monastery, they describe trade routes, caravans, crafts, village organisation, marriage and money in a detail the doctrinal literature does not, and they are used as a source for the economy of early historic India.