Robert Chalmers

The Pali work, entitled 'the Jataka', the first volume of which is now presented to the reader in an English form, contains 550 Jatakas or Birth-stories, which are arranged in 22 nipatas or books. This division is roughly founded on the number of verses (gathas) which are quoted in each story; thus the first book contains 150 stories, each of which only quotes one verse, the second 100, each of which quotes two, the third and fourth 50 each, which respectively quote 3 and 4, and so on to the twenty-first with 5 stories, each of which quotes 80 verses, and the twenty-second with 10 stories, each quoting a still larger number. Each story opens with a preface called the paccuppannavatthu or 'story of the present', which relates the particular circumstances in the Buddha's life which led him to tell the birth-story and thus reveal some event in the long series of his previous existences as a bodhisatta or a being destined to attain Buddha-ship. This is volume 1, comprising the ‘Ekanipata.’.

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