Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/89

Rh verse or verses, either in the Atīta-vatthu or in the Conclusion, and sometimes in both. The number of cases in which all the verses are Abhisamhuddha-gāthā is relatively small (being only one in ten of the Jātakas published ); and the number of cases in which they occur together with verses in the Atīta-vatthu is very small indeed (being only five out of the three hundred Jātakas published ); in the remaining two hundred and sixty-five the verse or verses occur in the course of the Birth Story, and are most generally spoken by the Bodisat himself.

There are several reasons for supposing that these verses are older than the prose which now forms their setting. The Ceylon tradition goes so far as to say that the original Jātaka Book, now no longer extant, consisted of the verses alone; that the Birth Stories are Commentary upon them; and the Introductory Stories, the Conclusions and the  'Pada-gata-sannaya,'  or word-for-word explanation of the verses, are Commentary on this Commentary. And archaic forms and forced