Udaya

The Jataka tales

ජාතක කතා जातक

Also Jatakas, Birth stories.

Poetry Pali Verses perhaps third century before the common era, prose commentary about the fifth century

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What it is#

The Jatakas are stories of the Buddha’s previous births, as animals, as kings, as merchants and as a tree spirit, each told to illustrate a perfection he was developing. They are among the oldest story collections in the world and are also social documents: they describe trade, caravans, guilds, village life and court procedure in a detail the doctrinal texts never bother with. They are carved on the railings at Bharhut and Sanchi, painted at Ajanta, and told nightly in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand.

Its shape#

Five hundred and forty seven stories in the Pali canonical collection, within the Khuddaka Nikaya of the Sutta Pitaka. Canonically only the verses are scripture and the prose is commentary, which is a technicality with consequences: the stories as everybody knows them are the commentary. Each follows a fixed structure: a story of the present, a story of the past, the verses, and an identification in which the Buddha says which character he was.

What it argues about#

These are not settled texts

What the Jatakas are for is argued about. Within Theravada they are a vehicle for the perfections and for teaching lay audiences, and the last ten, especially the Vessantara Jataka, carry the most weight. Historians read them as a window onto north Indian society of the period that is unmatched, because they were not composed to describe it. And a good many of the stories are demonstrably older folk tales fitted with a Buddhist frame, some of them shared with the Panchatantra, which raises the question of whether the collection is Buddhist literature or Indian folklore in Buddhist dress. All three readings are held by people who know the texts well.

Episodes worth knowing#

Vessantara gives everything away

Prince Vessantara, perfecting generosity, gives away the kingdom’s rain making elephant and is exiled; then his horses and chariot; then, to a brahmin who asks, his two children; and finally his wife. The children are beaten in front of him and he does not intervene, because he has given them. Everything is restored at the end. It is the most popular Jataka in Theravada countries, recited over a day and a night as a merit making occasion, and listeners weep at it. It is also the one that most unsettles modern readers, and Buddhist commentators have addressed that unease for centuries rather than ignoring it.

The monkey king and the bridge

A troop of monkeys lived in a mango tree on a riverbank and the king of Benares came to take the fruit, surrounding the tree. The monkey king tied a cane to his feet and spanned the gap to the far bank with his own body, and the whole troop crossed over his back; the cane was too short and he held the gap himself, and his back broke under the crossing. The human king, watching, had him brought down and asked why. He said that he was their chief and they had lived under his protection. The carving of this story is on the Bharhut railing, which means it was already standard by the second century before the common era.

Whose telling#

There is no single text

Pali Jatakatthavannana
The canonical verses with the Sinhala derived Pali prose commentary, the standard collection of five hundred and forty seven.
Aryasura, Jatakamala
A fourth century Sanskrit retelling of thirty four stories in high literary style, used by Mahayana traditions and painted at Ajanta.
Sculpture and painting
Carved at Bharhut, Sanchi and Amaravati and painted at Ajanta, which dates many of the stories earlier than any surviving text of them.
Southeast Asian tellings
Thai, Burmese, Lao and Khmer versions, with local Jatakas added that are not in the Pali collection, and the Vessantara recitation as an annual festival.

Where the regions differ#

  • Tamil
  • Kerala
  • Telugu
  • Kannada
  • North
  • Maharashtra
  • Bengal
  • Punjab
  • Assam
  • Sri Lanka
  • Nepal
  • Gujarat
  • Odisha
  • Mithila
  • Kashmir
  • Tulu Nadu
  • manipur
  • rajasthan
  • konkani
  • sindhi
  • jharkhand
  • himalayan
  • kodava
Where it is kept: 4 of the 23 traditions this app follows. The filled one is where it is from.
Sri Lanka
Told constantly, carved and painted in the temples, with the Vessantara recited as a merit making occasion and the Poya days used for it.
North India
Carved at Bharhut and Sanchi and painted at Ajanta, which is where most Indians now meet them.
Nepal
The Newar Buddhist tradition keeps Sanskrit versions and its own additional birth stories.
Maharashtra
Ajanta holds the great painted cycles, and the Ambedkarite tradition has brought the stories back into Marathi circulation.

All the works