Rhys-Davids has clinched the matter in his interesting translation of a number of the Jatakas (Buddhist Birth Stories, vol. i., Trübner, 1880). These include two which have passed into North's version, and are reprinted at the end of the present Introduction.
The latest date at which the stories were thus connected is fixed by the curious fact that some of them have been sculptured round the sacred Buddhist shrines of Sanchi, Amaravati[1], and Bharhut, in the last case with the titles of the Jatakas inscribed above them (Rhys-Davids, p. lix., and Table VIII) These have been dated by Indian archæologists as before 200 b.c., and Mr. Rhys-Davids produces evidence which would place the stories as early as 400 b.c. Between 400 b.c. and 200 b.c., many of our tales were put together in a frame formed of the life and experience of the Buddha.
We have them now in quite a different order and connection, and the question arises, When were they taken out of the one frame and placed in the present one? This could only have been when the influence of Buddhism was declining in India, and I am therefore inclined to date
- ↑ Now on the grand staircase of the British Museum.
