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Updated: May 31, 2025
This had been Lucy's tale: "Sky-High, I dreamed that you were a wang and had lived in a palace." To-day she sat a long time in the arbor to compose the tale she would tell in the evening when they would be on the veranda, with Sky-High on the stair at their feet. So in the evening she said, "I have composed another Jataka story. Would you like to hear it, mother? Would you, Sky-High?"
The characteristic form of Buddhist legend is the Jâtaka, or birth story.
This period is known as the Vessantara Jataka, of which Hardy, M. B., pp. 116-124, gives a long account; see also "Buddhist Birth Stories," the Nidana Katha, p. 158. "This earth, unconscious though she be, and ignorant of joy or grief, Even she by my free-giving's mighty power was shaken seven times."
Assuredly they were own brothers to our mad men of Gotham, the Indian villagers who, being pestered by mosquitoes when at work in the forest, bravely resolved, according to Játaka 44, to take their bows and arrows and other weapons and make war upon the troublesome insects until they had shot dead or cut in pieces every one; but in trying to shoot the mosquitoes they only shot, struck, and injured one another.
This narrative is repeated in an amplified form in the Sutta and Jâtaka called Mahâsudassana, in which the Buddha is said to have been that king in a previous birth. Kusinârâ was at that time one of the capitals of the Mallas, who were an aristocratic republic like the Sâkyas and Vajjians. At the Buddha's command Ânanda went to the Council hall and summoned the people.
This is interesting, for it seems to show that it was possible to accept Gotama's doctrine, or the greater part of it, as something independent of his personality and an inheritance from earlier teachers. The Udâna and Jâtaka relate another plot without specifying the year. Some heretics induced a nun called Sundarî to pretend she was the Buddha's concubine and hired assassins to murder her.
No passage has yet been adduced from the suttas mentioning more than seven Buddhas but later books, such as the Buddha-vaṃsa and the introduction to the Jâtaka, describe twenty-five . There are twenty-four Jain Tîrthankaras and according to some accounts twenty-four incarnations of Vishnu. Probably all these lists are based on some calculation as to the proper allowance of saints for an aeon.
She wondered again if he were not indeed a wang! After a while she made up her mind to relate a Jataka story that night. The curious tales their little serving-man had told, he called Jataka legends all of them parables to illustrate the teachings of the divine Buddha. These tales had enchanted Lucy, though Charlie cared little for them he preferred to hear of kites and other Chinese games.
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