Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/79

Rh Dhamma-padaŋ or 'Collection of Scripture Verses,' contains a considerable number of them. Mr. Fausböll has published copious extracts from this Commentary, which may be by Buddhaghosa, as an appendix to his edition of the text; and the work by Captain Rogers, entitled 'Buddbaghosa's Parables' — a translation from a Burmese book called 'Dbammapada-vattbu' (that is 'Stories connected with the Dbamma-padaŋ') — consists almost entirely of Jātaka tales.

In Siam there is even a rival collection of Birth Stories, which is called ('The Fifty Jātakas'), and of which an account has been given us by M. Léon Feer; and the same scholar has pointed  out that isolated stories, not contained in our collection, are also to be found in the Pāli literature of that country. The first hundred and fifty tales in our collection are divided into three Paṇṇāsas, or fifties; but the Siamese collection cannot be either of these, as M. Feer has ascertained that it contains no tales beginning in the same way as any of those in either of these three 'Fifties.'

1 'Etude sur les Jātakas,' pp. 62-65.

2 Ibid. pp. 66-71.

3 This is clear from vol. i. p. 410 of Mr. Fausböll's text, where, at the end of the 100th tale, we find the words Majjhima-paṇṇāsako nitthito, that is, 'End of the Middle Fifty.' At the end of the 50th tale (p. 261) there is a corresponding entry, Paṭhamo paṇṇāso, 'First Fifty'; and though there is no such entry at the end of the 150th tale, the expression 'Middle Fifty' shows that there must have been, at one time, such a division as is above stated.