Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/75

Rh translation, not only of the stories, but of an elaborate commentary, containing a detailed Explanation of the verse or verses which occur in each of the stories; an Introduction to each of them, giving the occasion on which it is said to have been told; a Conclusion, explaining the connexion between the personages in the Introductory Story and the characters in the Birth Story; and finally, a long general Introduction to the whole work. It is, in fact, an edition by a later hand of the earlier stories; and though I have called it concisely the Jātaka Book, its full title is 'The Commentary on the Jātakas.'

We do not know either the name of the author of this work, or the date when it was composed. The meagre account given at the commencement of the work itself (below, pp. 1, 2) contains all our present information on these points. Mr. Childers, who is the translator of this passage, has elsewhere ascribed the work to Buddhaghosa; but I venture to think that this is, to say the least, very uncertain.

We have, in the thirty- seventh chapter of the Mahāvaŋsa, a perhaps almost contemporaneous account of Buddhaghosa's literary work; and it is there distinctly stated, that after writing in India the Atthasālinī (a commentary on the Dhammasaŋginī, the first of the Six