The Jatakamala of Aryasura Volume 1

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The Pracya-Manija-Gavejana-Mandiram feels immense pleasure in bringing out a bilingual edition of Aryasûra's Jatakamala as the volume one of the Pracya-Manisa Classics series.

The Gavesana-Mandiram has been founded, in October 2005, by some eminent persons as a registered academic institution, with the noble objective, the study of and research in oriental literary and cultural heritage. A major part of Indian heritage constitute a vast classical literature, chiefly written in Sanskrit and Prakrit. This literature is unique in its comprehensiveness and range as well as in its intrinsic value. Besides, this litirature is unparalled in the world for its amazing continuity of at least five thousand years. This literature comprises innumerable branches and disciplines, both religious and philosophical on the one hand and material and secular on the other. Some of the disciplines and branches are: the Vedas and auxiliary sciences; grammar, lexicography and semantics; religious and social codes, philosophical and metaphysical schools; logic and epistemology, sacred books of various sects; polity and statecraft; erotica; epic and mythology; creative literature and belles-letters; poetics, aesthetics and dramaturgy; architecture, iconography, music and dance; astronomy and mathematics, etc. etc. All the Indian traditions, -Brahmanical, Buddhist and Jain- have contributed to the growth and enrichment of this literature, down the ages.

The Gavesana-Mandiram has taken up the ambitious project of starting a series of bilingual editions of the representative works in all branches of the Indian classical literature. To start with the Jatakamala of Aryadura, a fourth century book of Buddhist narratives, written as a compûkávya ( a poem in prose and verse), is being published as the volume one in the series. Its place in Sanskrit literature in general and in the Buddhist narrative literature in particular has been discussed in greater details in the Introduction, in the following pages.

1. The Jatakas The word jataka' is derived from the Sanskrit root jan (to be born) with the past participle suffix Ata and then again with the secondary suffix Aa, which in this case does not add anything to the meaning (Le a drtha pratyaya). An anonymous commentary on the Jatakamald of Aryasûra reads: jdtih, jätam, janma, pradurbhavah; tadroa jatakam, Le. Jataka primarily means a birth or an appearance. Therefore, the word jätaka means 'a birth', or 'what is born', or 'related to what is born. Jataka in the Buddhist context is the name of a class of religious literature, traditionally one of the nine divisions of the knowledge revealed by the Buddha and recorded in the Tripitaka. The nine divisions of the teachings have been enumerated in the Majjhima-nikaya (PTS ed. 1.133) in the following way: goam suttam teyyakaranam gatham udanam itivuttakam jätakam abbhutadhammam vedallam.

But the Pali canonical works, though they include the Játaka in the list of nine divisions, do not define it. Some of the Vijñānavädin authors come forward with an excellent definition of the Jataka. Asanga, one of the great exponents of the school, says in his Abhidharmasamuccaya (ed. Prahlad Pradhan, Visva- Bharati, 1950, p. 78): "Which one is Jataka? In which the Buddha narrates a story related to the deeds of a Bodhisattva (jätakam katamat? yad bodhisattvacarita-pitakasamprayuktam vṛttam desayati). Ratnakarasanti, in his Säratama commentary on the Astasahasrikāprajñāpāramitāsütra, defines Jātaka as what is connected with the practice, i.e. the deeds of a Bodhisattva (jätakam katamat? bodhisattvacarya-pratisamyuktam -ed. Padmanabh S. Jaini; Patna: K.P. Jayaswal Research Institute, 1979, p.2). Asanga further clarifies that the Buddha reveals, through the knowledge of his former births, his experiences as Bodhisattvas. These revelations are obviously known as the Jataka. The Buddha teaches his disciples through the Jatakas with a view to making them well-disposed to him (buddhaprasadajananartham prakasayati), or to inspiring eagerness and good disposition in their minds (cittasamvegāya cittaprasadaya).

**Contents and Sample Pages**