Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/42

 14 Presidential Address.

collections would appear to suggest that the form of the stories was not invariable. The history of this book shows the same general lines as that of the Christian gospels, or to take a more exact parallel, the mediaeval Gesta Romanorum. Whether there was really a trans- lation of the Singhalese commentary into Pali, or whether the Pali version took shape at a time when Pali was a real spoken vernacular, matters not for our present purpose ; it is sufficient to say that probably Buddhaghosa, or perhaps some one near his day, did put the book into its present shape. He used, however, traditional materials ; the verses all through show a dialect much more ancient than the prose, and one which closely resembles the Sanskrit dialect of the sacred books of the Northern sect. The antiquity of the verse-Pali, and its independence, are shown also by the occurrence of words and forms which can only be explained by a reference to the Vedas. We have here, in fact, a literary tradition which is directly derived from very ancient times, and not a translation from anything like con- temporary classical Sanskrit. Many of the stories given in the Jdtaka Book are also found in other of the sacred books or their commentaries.

The Pali Jdtaka Book begins with an Introduction which describes the chief events of the last earthly life of Buddha. Then follow the stories, classified in a truly Oriental way, by the number of verses quoted in each. The Plrst Book, containing 150 stories, has one verse in each ; the Second Book, two ; and so forth, until in the later books we have thirty, forty, fifty, or more given in the titles, as round numbers, of course. The last book of all, The Mahdnipdta, or Great Book, contains stories with several hundreds of verses : a thousand is the round number used to describe this section ; in fact, the scribe says in one place, cutting short an interminable conversation, full of strings of vain