by Sarah Shaw
Text and authorship
This brings us to the question of dates and authors, subjects on which ancient Indology can seem bewilderingly vague. Why are texts not given a year of composition of the kind we can fix to ancient Greek texts of the same period? Why are some dismissed as ‘late’ and some cited as ‘early’, an apparent term of approbation? Although some form of the texts were settled in the councils after the Buddha’s death, they do not seem to have been fixed at that time and were not committed to writing. 47 So they are multilayered, full of accretions and reworkings inserted sometime during the period of transmission. Sorting out what is original and what is a modification is tricky. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that in Pali texts early strata are inevitably viewed with favour as being closer to an original form and hence the formulation of the teaching given by the Buddha himself. For Jatakas a clear assignation of dates is even more problematic as we know even less about how they were handed down than we do about other early Buddhist texts. Most scholars would agree that some of the verses are very old indeed. They could be adaptations of material that predates Buddhism and other canonical Pali texts. The latest date for any of the texts is the third century CE. Between these parameters there is much room for manoeuvre: archaeological evidence such as Bharhut and Ajanta indicates that stories like Jatakas were around from the first or second century BCE, though we do not know what form they took. The text that is usually taken for the stories, the Jataka atthakatha, is a combination of some extracts from the commentary which provide a prose narrative and the verses, many, though perhaps not all, of which are very early. The verses do not make sense without some prose sections as well, so there must have been some sort of story associated with them from the start. 48 The commentary is also not story alone, as there are all sorts of glosses, explanations, changes, interjections and curious asides in the ancient Indian commentarial manner. It could include features that are very old, but have just become subsumed in later material. These factors make for very complex problems. The stories, however, have at least survived. In the nineteenth century the courageous Danish scholar Fausbøll sifted through all of the material and produced the story text we have now, distinguishing it from commentary by putting this in larger type. As we have seen in ‘A note on the text’, he himself acknowledges the shortcomings of this approach.
For these reasons authorship is also a complete unknown when dealing with Jatakas: the Buddha is said to narrate the tales, but others from the time of the councils must have composed at least the sections in the third person. Much of the prose has been attributed to the fifth-century commentator, Buddhaghosa, although the subject is still under debate. 49 The composition of the stories and the language of the verses show signs of careful construction but we do not know who was responsible for this. At any rate, if the stories did evolve over a long period, aesthetic and spiritual considerations seem to have shaped this process, perhaps as the tales were told for different audiences. As we have seen, distinct genres can be discerned within different tales, often shaped and governed by length. Shorter tales, with a single verse, follow a pattern we associate with Aesopic fables, culminating in a pithy folk aphorism. Longer Jatakas include set interchanges and verse dialogues that anticipate Indian epic and heroic drama. Many stories exhibit a sense of theatre and a subtlety of construction throughout: changes would not simply be the result of a need for additional doctrinal information or to fulfil a didactic intent. Stories that continue to be told grow, shrink, acquire new slants and develop occasional embellishments in accordance with new historical developments or the creative input of the narrator. This certainly seems to be the case for Jatakas: the problem is that we just do not have the information to find out how this occurred, which elements are innovatory, or who was responsible for any changes.
It is remarkable how little Jatakas changed over a long period. There are certainly differences between details described in the verses, the early layer of the text, and the narrative, an indicator of some sort of evolution, but given the centuries involved in their development these are surprisingly minimal. 50 It seems likely that many hands were involved in the evolution of their transmission. Perhaps some added comments or elaborated a piece of dialogue or description for effect until the form finally became fixed. If the texts were handed down by the order of monks, all of those contributing would have felt they were conforming to the spirit of the teaching. So in reading Jatakas the use of terms such as ‘early’ and ‘late’ need not be associated with a value judgement. Some features that are apparently late, such as the delineation of each of the perfections, have added considerably to the success of the collection as a whole.
Choice of stories
The link with the perfections is essential to an understanding of the stories and seems to have been a crucial factor in shaping the composition of many. As only a selection of all 547 can be included here I have chosen twenty-six stories, with at least one story that is linked in one ancient source to each perfection. This policy was suggested by an excellent short Pali reader that I.B. Horner translated for the Pali Text Society (PTS), some years ago, which gives just ten short tales or extracts from longer ones, one representing each. 51 In many cases the attributions are also generally accepted throughout most traditions (316 for generosity, 506 for virtue, 9 for renunciation, 402 for wisdom, 55 and 539 for effort, 313 for forbearance, 75 for truth, 538 for resolve, 540 for loving kindness). The last perfection, of equanimity, is represented by two very different stories (94 and 273). Choosing a good sample from a collection of so many is next to impossible, so in addition to this I aimed for stories to make the anthology reasonably varied. The first is a key story in the collection as a whole, in its depiction of a journey across a wilderness, steered and rescued by the skill within the means of the Bodhisatta. ‘The story of the partridge’ (37) gives a rule of thumb for precedence that is employed by Buddhist sangha to this day. ‘The Vedabbha mantra story’ (48) is particularly important for the history of the transportation of folk motifs and themes as it corresponds so closely to tales found in Chaucer and in The Thousand Nights and a Night, both written over fifteen hundred years later. ‘The story of the monkey king’ (407) has always been amongst the most popular tales. Two of the stories show the Jatakas at their most down-to-earth (106 and 108). ‘The story of the swift goose' (476) was chosen for the way that the plot, with the crucial interchange between the king and the goose, is informed by a distinctively Buddhist understanding of the nature of mind and matter. The last three in this collection (538, 539 and 540) are the first of the final ten stories. With their extended poetic comment, eulogies and theatrical interchanges between characters on centre stage, the last ten have a different weight and feel from earlier stories. As so many temples around South-East Asia have depictions of these, and of many of the other stories, sites where there are murals, pictures or friezes that depict a particular Jataka are noted in the discussion that introduces each tale. Stories have also been chosen that are depicted in major Buddhist sites in India (see Appendix C).
The Pali canon and other related texts
Jatakas are regarded as one of what are called the nine limbs of the Buddha’s teaching. 52 The rest of the canon need not be discussed here in detail, but some words should be said about the texts involved to place the collection in its context. The main body of early Buddhist texts is divided into three ‘baskets’. These are the Vinayapitaka, the rules for monks, the Abhidhammapitaka, the higher philosophy, and the Suttapitaka, texts concerning particular occasions and incidents where teachings are given by the Buddha. The latter is composed primarily of the four nikayas, the suttas of middle length (Majjhimanikaya), the long ones (Dighanikaya), the gradual suttas, arranged by means of number (Anguttaranikaya), and the connected suttas (Samyuttanikaya). The Jataka verses are part of the Khuddakanikaya, another branch of the suttas. All of these texts are in Pali and regarded as ‘canonical’, part of the early strata of texts purportedly composed at t
he councils held in the years after the Buddha’s death. At these meetings the texts were committed to memory: different groups of bhanakas, or chanters, were assigned different collections. Inevitably, each collection acquired, or had from the outset, its own distinctive features and emphases. 53 It is generally presumed that Jataka verses were transmitted in this way but we have no direct evidence of this.
Other related texts are useful for understanding the context of Jatakas. The Apadanas, a closely related genre, provide verse accounts of the previous lives of the arahats. The Story of Gotama Buddha (Jatakanidana), the introduction to the Jatakas, gives an account of the Buddha taking the Bodhisatta vow, his decision to develop the ten perfections and his life story in his last life, as Gotama, in which that vow is fulfilled. It also associates some Jatakas with each of the ten perfections. The Basket of Conduct (Cariyapitaka ), a late canonical work, relates some of the incidents of the Jatakas to the first seven perfections. 54 These texts, with their discussion of different perfections, can throw some helpful lights on the stories themselves. All of them share the same heritage as the Jataka stories: many stories are duplicated in them, at least in essentials, and incidents which feature in suttas from the major nikayas, for example, often provide the basis of the story from the present. It seems that Jatakas were, from the early days of Buddhism, absorbed into the practice tradition and possibly influenced by it too.
Historically, the tales spread quickly and exerted considerable influence on other storytelling traditions. Buddhism’s energetic dissemination around the East can be traced in a trail of Jatakas or tales derived from them. Jatakas feature in the Sanskrit Jatakamala collection, and are told in various forms in Burmese, Chinese, Khotanese, Sinhalese, Sogdian, Tibetan and Tocharian. 55 Their popularity was not confined to Buddhist contexts. Many are found in the eighth-century Persian stories of Kalilag and Damnag (Kalilah and Dimnah). In Europe, subsequent retellings or variants of the tales can be found in the works of Boccaccio, Poggio, La Fontaine, Chaucer and Shakespeare. 56 Perhaps the most curious quirk of history for Jatakas in the West was the way their hero was absorbed into Christian folklore. ‘Josaphat of India’ (Bodhisatta), whose adventures are recounted as Barlaam and Josaphat by the seventh-century St John of Damascus, was eventually canonized as a Christian saint. 57
Language
A word should be said about the language and history of Jatakas. Pali is probably not the dialect or language of the Buddha, who appears to have spoken an early form of what is known as ‘Middle Indo-Aryan’. Jatakas as a whole, including the commentarial prose sections, are regarded as canonical ‘Pali’ despite the less authoritative status the tradition has accorded to the later prose parts of the text. It is difficult to communicate the quality of the language in a text in translation. The vocabulary of Jatakas tends to be more Sanskritic than other Pali texts, partly because the subject matter depends less on technical Buddhist terms. The style of the prose itself is simple. Because it is possible in Pali, as in Sanskrit, to link a number of consecutive actions by a string of participles that culminate with one main active verb, the prose contains some very long sentences that impart a great deal of information. Many important narrative events, perhaps separated by years, can all be strung together: so the first sentence of a tale may include the birth, childhood and early training of the Bodhisatta over a period of sixteen years. Conversely, a single sentence can include a whole series of actions that take place in a split second, as in the shooting of the arrows in Jataka 476. Unfortunately, these sentences need to be divided into several shorter ones for translation, so some of the effect is inevitably lost. Sometimes sentences at key points in the action are very short, with one subject, one active verb and one object. This all contributes to a very varied and lively narrative style, suggesting that considerable skill was involved in creating the aesthetic balance which lends Jataka prose its distinctive nature; it is not really possible to translate this well. The verses often use archaic and poetic forms. They do not rhyme, but are distinguished not only by the choice of language but by the use of metre, an effect that also cannot really be recreated in translation. I have not tried to put the verses into English rhyme or verse form but have numbered them to show where they occur.
Another problem for a translator is created by a tendency towards the repetitive use of language, characteristic of oral literature: the same word can be reused in a way that a modern writer would avoid at all costs. This poses difficulties. It is a convention in the translation of Buddhist texts that the same translation for each word is used each time it occurs. For suttas and technical passages, which require precision in the use of terms, this consistency is sometimes essential. In storytelling and for common words denoting speech such a policy does not always work. In Jataka 48 the word dhana or wealth occurs about thirty-two times. It is only a short story, and it simply is not natural in narrative English to use the same word so many times, so a few variations are used: riches, booty, treasure, wealth, etc. The way speech is treated also needs a bit of adjustment. Frequent occurrences of the words ‘he said’ or ‘she said’ are irksome in translation. Plenty of alternatives such as ‘reply’, ‘narrate’, ‘tell’, ‘speak’ and ‘invite’ need to be used so that it does not sound boring for the modern reader. The name of the speaker also sometimes needs to be inserted at a late point in the dialogue just to remind me, and I expect the reader too, who is saying what: perhaps ancient Indians had a better memory in this regard than we do.
Some Buddhist terms needed consideration. The word dhamma has an immense range of meanings and no English word does it justice. As the second quality of the Triple Gem, the teaching of the Buddha, it is used in a special way, as the teaching given and left behind by him in his last life, which leads to freedom. In Jatakas it also means a more general kind of spiritual and moral teaching, for the period when there is no Buddha. In both these cases the original word has often been kept. In the end ‘a dhamma talk’ (dhammadesana) is just a better translation for a book for a general readership than ‘a discourse on the teaching’, which sounds a little forbidding. For the hall where the monks meet I have also kept the word and called it a dhamma hall: ‘teaching’ does not cover all the activities that probably went on there, such as chanting and private meditation, and ‘assembly’ does not really carry the same emotional weight such a place would have had for those who used it. Other meanings of the word are also evident in the stories. Sometimes dhamma is simply ‘what is right’ or ‘justice’ and in this sense accords with the ancient Indian concept of dharma. It can mean ‘how things are’ or even just ‘things’: to leave it untranslated in some such cases would be to lend it a weight that the context does not justify. Another word that is used occasionally in this translation is ‘bhikkhu’, for a Buddhist monk. This has been translated as ‘monk’ in the narrative and third person contexts as this is much simpler for a reader new to the term to feel comfortable with the actions of the stories. It has been kept for address, however, as it seems a shame to lose it altogether. The word ‘bhante’, still used in addressing a single monk, is also retained. I hope that this sort of compromise, which does not exclude the use of these Pali terms completely, gives a bit of variation in the stories and helps to make them easier for a newcomer to Buddhism to read. There is a glossary at the end for translations of some key words.
Pali texts are sometimes discussed in the introductory essays to the stories for parallels and explanations of features of Jataka stories. Because there are now at least two good translations for some of the collections it has become confusing for someone new to the study of early Buddhism to work out which modern translation of any collection of suttas refers to which text. So each has been annotated with reference to the Pali text. In order to help a newcomer to the subject there is an explanation of how to look up translations and texts in the Bibliography.
Reading the stories now
On the night of his enlightenment, the Buddha, with his mind finally freed,
saw the succession of his past lives: ‘When my concentrated mind was thus purified, bright, unblemished, rid of imperfection, malleable, wieldy, steady, and attained to imperturbability, I directed it to the knowledge of the recollection of past lives . . . This was the first true knowledge attained by me in the first watch of the night.’ 58 We might not remember, or even believe that there were, past lives in the technical sense it is used here. The metaphor is a useful one, however, to describe the potential hidden from us in our present human condition. Telling stories about our past is an activity of the human mind, irrespective of time and place. For the modern reader the dynamic established in Jataka tales is like the relationship we all have with our own oddly assorted memories and influences that contribute to what we are. We make accounts of our past ‘lives’ and ‘selves’ in this lifetime, and try and understand them from the perspective of the present. How can we interpret them in a more spacious way, that does not reduce motive to thwarted drives described in post-Freudian terms, or assign ‘blame’ to a single event in our childhood development? As in the stories in this collection, the present moment provides the creative chance for those described within the stories as hearing them from the Buddha himself: it is where contact with dhamma, the truth, can revive stories in the memory and makes some form of illumination and change possible. The Jatakas challenge us to relate our pasts to ourselves from an entirely different perspective.