C., are
the oldest collection of folk-lore extant. They come down to us from
that dim far-off time when our forebears told tales around the same
hearth fire on the roof of the world. Professor Rhys Davids speaks of
them as "a priceless record of the childhood of our race. The same
stories are found in Greek, Latin, Arabic, Persian, and in most
European languages. The Greek versions of the Jataka tales were
adapted and ascribed to the famous storyteller, Aesop, and under his
name handed down as a continual feast for the children in the
West,--tales first invented to please and instruct our far-off cousins
in the East." Here East, though East, meets West!
A "Guild of Jataka Translators," under Professor E. B. Cowell,
professor of Sanskrit in the University of Cambridge, brought out the
complete edition of the Jataka between 1895 and 1907. It is from this
source that "Jataka Tales" and "More Jataka Tales" have been retold.
Of these stories, spread over Europe through literary channels,
Professor Cowell says, "They are the stray waifs of literature, in the
course of their long wanderings coming to be recognized under widely
different aspects, as when they are used by Boccaccio, or Chaucer, or
La Fontaine.
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