mals (but only rarely as a female of any kind). The ex-
istence of the jataka genre is based on the notion that
the Buddha, on the night of his enlightenment, at-
tained the recollection of his previous lives, which
then, throughout his life, he often had occasion to re-
late in order to illustrate a point, drive home a moral
lesson, or shed light on some situation. It is these sto-
ries that constitute the jatakas.
The jataka genre appears to be very old, for the term
jatakais included in an ancient categorization of Bud-
dhist literary styles, and depictions of jataka stories ap-
pear in Indian Buddhist art as early as the second
century B.C.E.
All of the lives related in the jatakas are understood
to have taken place during the Buddha’s BODHISATTVA
career, only after he had made a firm vow to become
a buddha in the distant future. The general function
of the jatakas, then, is to illustrate how the bodhisattva,
in life after life, cultivated various virtues and qualities
that ultimately contributed to his attainment of bud-
dhahood. Accordingly, most jatakas portray the bod-
hisattva as an exemplary figure, highlighting such
features as his wisdom, compassion, or ascetic detach-
ment. Many jatakas, in fact, are explicitly intended to
illustrate the bodhisattva’s cultivation of one of the
PARAMITA(PERFECTION) needed for buddhahood. In
the S ́as ́ajataka,for example, the bodhisattva is a hare
who offers his own body as food to a wandering trav-
eler, thus cultivating the “perfection of generosity.” In
the Brahmanajataka,he is a boy who refuses to steal
even when his brahmin teacher urges him to do so,
thus cultivating the “perfection of morality.” And in the
Ksantijataka,he is an ascetic who calmly tolerates the
mutilation inflicted on him by an angry king, thus cul-
tivating the “perfection of forbearance.” Some jataka
collections are even arranged on this basis: The JATAKA-
MALA(Garland of Jatakas) of Aryas ́ura, a famous San-
skrit collection from approximately the fourth century
C.E., arranges the bulk of its thirty-four stories (in-
cluding the three mentioned above) in accordance with
the first three of the six perfections; the Cariyapitaka
(Collection on [the Bodhisatta’s] Conduct) of the Pali
canon arranges its thirty-five versified jatakas in ac-
cordance with the THERAVADAlist of ten perfections.
The jataka genre was used to assimilate an enor-
mous amount of traditional Indian folklore into the
Buddhist fold, including many tales whose moral
lessons were not specifically Buddhist (or that had no
moral lesson at all). Any traditional tale could be
transformed into a jataka simply by turning one of
its characters into a previous birth of the Buddha. This
is especially true of the Jatakatthakatha(Explanation
of the Birth Stories), a massive Pali collection of 547
prose and verse jatakas, of which only the verses are
considered canonical. Much of the contents of the
Jatakatthakathaare likely non-Buddhist in origin, in-
cluding, for example, many animal fables, folk tales,
and fairy tales. Similarly, as the jataka genre spread to
Buddhist cultures outside of India, it often drew on lo-
cal folklore to domesticate existing jatakas or compose
wholly new ones more relevant to new environments.
Jataka stories exist not only in Sanskrit and Pali lit-
erature, but also in the Chinese and Tibetan canons,
as well as in many vernacular languages and texts.
Throughout history and throughout the Buddhist
world, jatakas have played a major role in the dissem-
ination of Buddhist teachings, being the constant fo-
cus of sermons, rituals, festivals, and many varieties of
art and performance. The relevance of the jatakas to
everyday Buddhist life is perhaps most apparent in
the Theravada cultures of Southeast Asia, where many
jatakas of the Pali tradition are widely known and fre-
quently alluded to in everyday conversation and moral
argument.See also:Avadana; Buddha, Life of the; Vis ́vantaraBibliography
Cowell, E. B., ed. The Jataka or Stories of the Buddha’s Former
Births,3 vols. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1990.
Jones, John Garrett. Tales and Teachings of the Buddha: The
Jataka Stories in Relation to the Pali Canon.London: Allen
and Unwin, 1979.
Khoroche, Peter, trans. Once the Buddha Was a Monkey: Arya
S ́ura’s Jatakamala.Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1989.
Schober, Juliane, ed. Sacred Biography in the Buddhist Traditions
of South and Southeast Asia.Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1997.REIKOOHNUMAJATAKA, ILLUSTRATIONS OFVisual jatakasdo not simply illustrate verbal jatakas
(birth stories) but share equal status with them. Each
is a unique narrative belonging to a genre of stories ex-
isting in a community of memory rather than in a spe-
cific verbal version. Except for the Vis ́vantara Jataka,JATAKA, ILLUSTRATIONS OF