Maha Prajnaparamita Sastra
by Gelongma Karma Migme Chödrön | 2001 | 941,039 words
This page describes “shasha-jataka” as written by Nagarjuna in his Maha-prajnaparamita-sastra (lit. “the treatise on the great virtue of wisdom”) in the 2nd century. This book, written in five volumes, represents an encyclopedia on Buddhism as well as a commentary on the Pancavimsatisahasrika Prajnaparamita.
The Śaśa-Jātaka
Thus when the Bodhisattva was a hare (śāśa), he roasted his own flesh to give to a hermit (ṛṣi).
Notes on the Śaśa-jātaka:
An exhaustive study of this well-known jātaka is in D. Schlinglof, Das Śaśa-jātaka, WZKS, XV, 1971, p. 57–67: literary sources in Pāli, Sanskrit, Chinese and Turkish Uigur; representations in India (Ajantā, Amarāvati, Nāgārjunakoṇḍa, Goli), in Central Asia (Qyzil), Java (Borobudur). On p. 57, the author notes a Śaśajātaka incorporated in the Jātakamālā (no. 4) of Haribhatta. This text has been published by M. Hahn, Haribhaṭṭa and Gōpadatta, in Studia philological buddhica, I (1977), p. 31–39, ed. by the Reiyukai Library of Tokyo.