Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/87

Rh and in answer to the same question. Thus no less than ten stories are each said to have been told to a certain love-sick monk as a warning to him against his folly; the closely-allied story given below as the Introduction to Birth Story No. 30 appears also as the Introduction to at least four others; and there are many other instances of a similar kind.

After the two stories have been told, there comes a Conclusion, in which the Buddha identifies the personages in the Birth Story with those in the Introductory Story; but it should be noticed that in one or two cases characters mentioned in the Atīta-vatthu are supposed not to have been reborn on earth at the time of the Paccuppanna-vatthu. And the reader must of course avoid the mistake of importing Christian ideas into this Conclusion by supposing that the identity of the persons in the two stories is owing to the passage of a 'soul' from the one to the other. Buddhism does not teach the Transmigration of Souls. Its doctrine (which is somewhat intricate, and for a fuller statement of which I must refer to my Manual of Buddhism ) would be better summarized as the Transmigration of Character;

1 Nos. 61, 62, 63, 147, 159, 193, 196, 198, 199, 263. 2 Nos. 106, 145, 191, 286. 3 Nos. 58, 73, 142, 194, 220, and 277, have the same Introductory Story. And so Nos. 60, 104, 116, 161. And Nos. 127, 128, 138, 173, 175. 4 See the Pāli note at the end of Jātaka No. 91. 5 pp. 99-106.