Jataka Tales

The Jataka tales are a large body of narrative literature from the Indian subcontinent recounting the previous lives of the Buddha, in human and animal form, illustrating the virtues and gradual spiritual progress that led to his eventual Buddhahood. Transmitted first in Prakrit and Sanskrit and later translated into Chinese, Tibetan, Khotanese and many other languages, the verse portions of the collection are considered among the oldest surviving parts of the Pali literary tradition, dating from around the fifth century BCE, with prose portions and further additions continuing to be incorporated up to about the third century CE; the stories were also carved in relief on early Buddhist stupas as visual narrative long before much of the written tradition was fixed. Structurally similar to the Hindu Panchatantra and to the Aesopic fable tradition, with which scholars have traced points of contact and mutual influence, the Jataka tales combine moral and didactic storytelling with the karmic and rebirth-centered worldview of Buddhist teaching, and they remain one of the most extensive fable literatures to survive from the ancient world.