The Jataka Stories - tr. Robert Chalmers

[Shi Da Dao]

This English translation of these magnificant stories (about the previous lives of the Lord Buddha) was published in 1895. The translation is excellent and allows Westerners Buddhists to access the wealth of wisdom contained in these philosophical morality tales. The stories themselves are varied in their content, but each serves as a conduit for the explanation of Buddhist thought. Each story must be carefully read and its message fully ingested. The oldest part of each story is thought to be the gatha - or short poems that sum-up each story, with the story itself being an extrapolation of the gatha. The thinking presented in these Pali texts might surprise those who may be of the opinion that early Buddhism is free of Mahayana thinking:


The Jataka Stories: Tr Robert Chalmers (1895)

May all beings be happy and free from suffering!