Part 4 - Number of the Jātaka tales

There is a controversy regarding the total number of the Jātaka tales. According to the Cullaniddesa it is only ‘Five hundred’—“Pañca Jātaka satāni”. 

‘The different Jātakaṭṭhakathā manuscripts (henceforth mss.) viz., “Grimblots mss.” collected from Sri Lanka; “Bigandet’s mss.” collected from Myanmar; Phayre’s copy of the above mentioned mss. differ with each other as to the actual number of the Jātaka stories.’^[1]  

The number is 500 in the Fa-hien’s itinerary which is collaborated with the record of the Cullaniddesa. Fousboll’s edition records the number as 547. Observations on the Jātaka stories by Bengali savant Ishan Chandra Ghosh, may be mentioned. He referred that in the Jātakamālā (text of Northern Buddhism) only 34 Jātaka tales are narrated. These were the original stories according to some on account of which Gotama Buddha earned the encomium of the knower of thirty-four former incarnations. However, the matter appears to be without any logical base because another text called Mahāvastu that lies with the Northern Buddhists mentions 80 Jātaka tales. According to Professor Hodgson a huge text exists in Tibet. The Jātaka tales as extant in China and Tibet however vary in count from those of Jātakaṭṭhakathāvaṇṇanā. There are many Jātaka tales in vogue which are not included in the Jātakaṭṭhakathāvaṇṇanā. That has no less than 565 such tales. But the Deccan texts are far older than the North Indian texts and contains that the number 550 past incarnation stories. It is very interesting as well as a queer fact how the number from 500 increased up to 550 or 566. Rhys Davids observed “our existing Jātaka book is only a partial record”.

The stories of the ten Jātakas which are traced in the different Nikāya and Vinaya literature were not specially Buddhist in character. These tales or episodes were modified and coloured to suit the Buddhist teachings and ethics. For instance, the Mahāsudassana Jātaka is nothing but legend of Sun-worship. The other stories belong to the Pre-Buddhist Indian folk-lore. To suffice this view we may also quote here Winternitz who wrote: ‘it was thus only necessary to identify the hero of any character of a story with the Bodhisattva in order to turn away tale however secular even frivolous into a Jātaka’ . Professor Benimadhav Barua discussed elaborately this problem. He had shown seven methods–repetition of the same story under 1)the same and 2) different titles; repetition of the same story with 3) changes in persons; repetition of the same story 4) conveying slightly different morals; development of different stories with the; 5) same plot 6) separations of parts from a whole and so on.

Footnotes and references:

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[1]:

Studies in the Common Jātaka and Avadāna Tales, S.C.Sarkar, p. iv-v; cf. Fa-hien's Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, Oxford, 1886; 2^nd Indian Report Delhi, 1972, p.106.