The Story of the Dasaratha Jataka and of the Ramayana

Extract

The existence of parallelisms between a number of the stories contained in the Jataka portion of the Buddhist literature and those embodied in the epic literature is an admittedly interesting fact, and is by now a commonplace of Post-Vedic studies. The canker of chronological uncertainty, however, that generally runs through the history of Indian literature and antiquities here also unfortunately prevails, and detracts much from the value of what would otherwise have been a highly decisive means for judging of the priority of the one to the other. Indeed, because of this particular disqualification, viz. chronological dubiousness, the issue often tends to appropriate wrong proportions, and generally a satisfactory solution of the diverse aspects of the problem thus presented in a double form becomes increasingly difficult.