Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/86

lxxiv reference in Table I., together with, the most important of those of the later Indian story-books of which anything certain is at present known.

There remains only to add a few words on the mode in which the stories, whose history in Europe and in India I have above attempted to trace, are presented to us in the Jātaka Book.

Each story is introduced by another explaining where and why it was told by the Buddha; the Birth Story itself being called the Atīta-vatthu or Story of the Past, and the Introductory Story the Paccuppanna-vatthu or Story of the Present. There is another book in the Pāli Piṭakas called, which consists of tales about the lives of. the early Buddhists; and many of the Introductory Stories in the Jātaka Book (such, for instance, as the tale about Little Roadling, No. 4, or the tale about Kumāra Kassapa, No. 12) differ very little from these Apadānas. Other of the Introductory Stories (such, for instance, as No. 17 below) seem to be mere repetitions of the principal idea of the story they introduce, and are probably derived from it. That the Introductory Stories are entirely devoid of credit is clear from the fact that different Birth Stories are introduced as having been told at the same time and place,