The Jātaka Tales
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Caution! Under Construction
Please be aware that this tag is still under construction and as such is missing information and may be changed or removed at any time. For all the content under consideration for this tag, see the “The Jātaka Tales” folder on Google Drive.
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I begin with some general observations on the gender of the Buddha’s past lives as reported in jataka narratives, followed by a translation of the relevant section from the Ekottarikaagama. Then I compare this Ekottarika-agama version to three other versions of this tale preserved in Pali and Chinese, in particular in relation to the way they deal with the dictum that a woman cannot receive a prediction of future Buddhahood.
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The prince and his two wives, buddhas of the ten directions, gods and nāgas all shed tears, which collect to form a big lake. Lotus flowers bloom on the lake, and from them spring buddhas. The earth quakes, and rainbows and flowers rain down from the sky.
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In the mixture with rags, strings and pegs together, well it was my image [rūpa].
So in the mixture with bone, flesh and sinews it is the individual rūpa of living beings.
If I divide the body parts apart, there is no individuality by name.
As my love was in rags, so it is in the body. Oh, blind passion! -
Then, when King Brahmadatta had released the elephant, he said in verse:
‘You should now leave, O king of elephants!
Serve your parents and be filial (towards them)!’ -
The Vessantara Jātaka is not only the most popular of all the Buddhist Jātaka tales, but is important in the tradition as a whole, generally considered by the Theravādin tradition to display the epitome of the Bodhisatta’s perfection of giving (dānapāramī). While most studies have focused on philological approaches, numerous questions as to the text’s structure and how to interpret individual parts within that structure have remained unresolved My study shall employ the theory of ‘chiasmus’ (inverted parallelism) to shed new light on both the key message of the story and also the sub-themes within it.
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Jātakas are often associated with specific locations, both within the land of Buddhism’s birth, and in other parts of Asia. There are records suggesting that such locations became early pilgrimage sites; contemporary sources also make reference to ‘local’ jātakas, which in many cases help to assimilate Buddhism into the local culture through its geography.
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The weaving together of first- and third-person narration in the JA allows the Buddha to identify himself with the story whilst simultaneously stepping back from it.
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In Jainism there is no equivalent path to the bodhisatt(v)a path; the karma that guarantees jinahood is bound a mere two births before that attainment, and the person who attracts that karma cannot do so willfully, nor is he aware of it being bound. There is therefore no Jain equivalent to the ubiquitous jātaka literature. In this paper I will explore what the absence of a jātaka genre in Jain traditions tells us about the genre’s role in Buddhism.
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Audio/Video (3)
Reference Shelf (1)
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… a free online searchable database of jātakas in Indian texts and art