Contents: Introduction. I. The book of birth stories, and their migration to the west: Orthodox Buddhist belief concerning it. Two reasons for the value attached to it: Selected stories: 1. The ass in the lion's skin. 2. The talkative tortoise. 3. The jackal and the crow. 4. The birth as "great physician". 5. Sakka's presents. 6. A lesson for kings. The Kalilag and Damnag literature. The Barlaam and Josaphat literature. Summary. II. On the history of the birth stories in India: The story of the lineage. 1. The distant epoch. 2. The intermediate epoch. 3. The proximate epoch. Supplementary tables: 1. Indian works. 2. The Kalilag and Damnag literature. 3. The Barlaam and Josaphat literature. 4. Comparison of the Cariya Pitaka and the Jataka Mala. 5. Alphabetical list of Jataka stories in the Mahavastu. 6. Places at which the tales were told. 7. The Bodisats. 8. Jatakas illustrated in Bas-relief on the ancient monuments. 9. Former Buddhas. Index.

"This is a collection of upwards of 550 folk-lore tales which forms part of the Buddhist canonical scriptures. The tales are in prose, each explaining a much more ancient poem of two or more lines. The allusions in the verses cannot be understood without the explanation given in the prose.

Jataka means 'birth-let', 'birth-er', or collectively 'birthanea'. And the 'story of the lineage' is a biography of Gotama Buddha so far as it includes those earth-lives which he was said to have lived under preceding Buddhas, and also the life he lived as himself a Buddha down to the time when his new Church had won a footing.

The Nidana Katha, as forming a running commentary on the Buddhavamsa (chronicle of the Buddhas), itself a canonical book, is a later comer into the Canon. In its treatment of the Buddha-legend-and the story of the life of the very real founder had by that time become legendary-it occupies a midway house between the biographical fragments in Vinaya and chief Nikayas, and those later more highly embroidered 'lives' of which there are not a few." (jacket)