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Updated: May 31, 2025
But if we admit that the career of the Buddha is better and nobler, and also that it is, as the Introduction to the Jâtaka recounts, simply the result of an earnest resolution to school himself and help others, kept firmly through the long chain of existences, there is nothing illogical or presumptuous in making our goal not the quest of personal salvation, but the attainment of Bodhisattvaship, that is the state of those who may aspire to become Buddhas.
But Lucy seemed to catch their spirit. And in the evening, when Sky-High sat with them under the trees or in the balconies, she often said, "Now tell us a Jataka story!" But one night she had said instead, "Now let me tell you a Jataka story!" The idea that Lucy had a Jataka story seemed to greatly amuse Sky-High. But the tale itself set his black eyes shining and blinking.
I frankly avow I would as soon believe the Buddhist Jataka as such a wholly irrational account of the ways of God with man.
He is now the representative of the secular power, the valiant protector of the Buddhist body, but is looked upon as inferior to Sakyamuni, and every Buddhist saint. He appears several times in Fa-Hsien's narrative. E. H., pp. 108 and 46. At other times it means, as here, "in a former age," some pre-existent state in the time of a former birth. The incident related is "a Jataka story."
It pervades the Jâtaka stories, and more than once he is said to have smiled when remembering some previous birth. Some suttas, such as the tales of the Great King of Glory, and of King Mahâ Vijita's sacrifice , are simply Jâtakas in another form—interesting stories full of edification for those who can understand but not to be taken as a narrative of facts.
Other important works included in it are the Thera and Therî-gâthâ or poems written by monks and nuns respectively, and the Jâtaka or stories about the Buddha's previous births . Some of the rather miscellaneous contents of this Nikâya are late and do not belong to the same epoch of thought as the discourses attributed to Gotama.
He said and he is just herein that the River of Healing will break forth even as I dreamed at my feet, if need be. Having found the Way, seest thou, that shall free me from the Wheel, need I trouble to find a way about the mere fields of earth which are illusion? That were senseless. I have my dreams, night upon night repeated; I have Jataka; and I have thee, Friend of all the World.
The seed is found in the doctrine which already forms part of the system of the Little Vehicle, when it tells of the personal Buddhas and the Buddhas elect, or future Buddhas. In the Jataka stories, or Birth tales, "the Buddha elect" is the title given to each of the beings, man, angel, or animal, who is held to be a Bodhisattva, or the future Buddha in one of his former births.
The former is no longer the demon-slaying soma-drinking deity of the Vedas, but the heavenly counterpart of a pious Buddhist king. He frequently appears in the Jâtaka stories as the protector of true religion and virtue, and when a good man is in trouble, his throne grows hot and attracts his attention.
The most celebrated are the pathetic tale of Kunâla which closely resembles a Jâtaka , and the account of how Asoka vowed to present a hundred million gold pieces to the Sangha and not being able to raise the whole sum made a gift of his dominions instead. Asoka had a decisive effect on the history of Buddhism, especially in making it a world religion.
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