it has been preserved in Ceylon. The tradition is that these 550 Gâtaka stories, composed in Pâli, were taken to Ceylon by Mahinda, about 250 b.c., that the commentary was there translated into Singhalese, and that the commentary was retranslated into Pâli by Buddhaghosha, in the fifth century a.d. It is in this commentary alone that the text of the Gâtakas has come down to us. This text has been edited by Dr. Fausböll. He has distinguished in his edition between three component elements, the tale, the frame, and the verbal interpretation. This text, of which the beginning was translated in 1880 by Prof. Rhys Davids, is now being translated by Mr. R. Chalmers, Mr. W. R. D. Rouse, Mr. H. T. Francis and Mr. R. A. Neil, and the first volume of their translation has appeared in 1895 under the able editorship of Professor Cowell.
As Professor Speyer has explained, the Gâtakamâlâ, the Garland of Birth-stories, which he has translated, is a totally different work. It is a Sanskrit rendering of only thirty-four Gâtakas ascribed to Ârya Sûra. While the Pâli Gâtaka is written in the plainest prose style, the work of Ârya Sûra has higher pretensions, and is in fact a kind of kâvya, a work of art. It was used by the Northern Buddhists, while the Pâli Gâtaka belongs to the Canon of the Southern Buddhists. The date of Ârya Sûra is difficult to fix. Târanâtha (p. 90) states that Sûra was known by many names, such as Asvaghosha, Mâtriketa, Pitriketa, Durdarsha (sic), Dharmika-subhûti, Matikitra. He also states that towards the end of his life Sûra was in correspondence with king Kanika (Kanishka?), and that he began to write the hundred Gâtakas illustrating Buddha's acquirement of the ten Pâramitâs (see p. xiv), but died when he had finished only thirty-four. It is certainly curious that our Gâtakamâlâ contains thirty-four Gâtakas[1]. If therefore we could rely on Târanâtha,
- ↑ The same is also the number of Avadânas in the Bodhisattva-Avadâna, and the stories seem to be the same as those of our Gâtakamâlâ.—Rajendralal Mitra, Sanskrit Buddhist Literature, p. 49.
