i recollect riding late one night along the high-road from galle to colombo. the road skirts the shore. on the left hand the long breakers of the indian ocean broke in ripples on the rocks in the many little bays. on the right an endless vista of tall cocoanut palms waved their top-knots over a park-like expanse of grass, and the huts of the peasantry were visible here and there beneath the trees. in the distance a crowd had gathered on the sward, either seated on the grass or leaning against the palms. i turned aside—no road was wanted—to see what brought them there that moonlight night.

the villagers had put an oval platform under the trees. on it were seated yellow robed monks with palm-leaf books on their laps. one was standing and addressing the folk, who were listening to bana, that is “the word”—discourses, dialogues, legends, or stories from the pali canon. the stories were the well-known birth-stories, that is the ancient fables and fairy-tales common to the aryan race which had been consecrated, as it were, by the hero in each, whether man or animal, being identified with the buddha in a former birth. to these wonderful stories the simple peasantry, men, women and children, clad in their best and brightest, listen the livelong night with unaffected delight, chatting pleasantly now and again with their neighbors; rising quietly and leaving for a time, and returning at their will, and indulging all the while in the mild narcotic of the betel-leaf, their stores of which afford a constant occasion for acts of polite good-fellowship. neither preachers nor hearers may have that deep sense of evil in the world and in themselves, nor that high resolve to battle with and overcome it, which animated some of the first disciples. they all think they are earning “merit” by their easy service. but there is at least, at these full-moon festivals, a genuine feeling of human kindness, in harmony alike with the teachings of gotama and with the gentle beauty of those moonlit scenes.[1]

1. see rhys davids’ buddhism (s.p.c.k.), pp. 57, 58.

it is not only under the palm groves of the south that these stories are a perennial delight. wherever buddhism has gone they have gone with it. they are known and loved on the plains of central asia, in the valleys of kashmir and afghanistan, on the cold tablelands of nepal, tartary and tibet, through the vast regions of india and china, in the islands of japan and the malay archipelago, and throughout the jungles of siam and annam.

and not only so. soldiers of alexander who had settled in the east, wandering merchants of many nations and climes, crusading knights and hermits who had mixed with eastern folk, brought the stories from east to west. they were very popular in europe in the middle ages; and were used, more especially by the clergy, as the subjects of numerous homilies, romances, anecdotes, poems and edifying plays and mysteries. the character of the hero of them in his last or former births appealed so strongly to the sympathies, and especially to the religious sympathies, of medi?val christians that the buddha (under another name) was included, and has ever since remained, in the list of canonized saints both in the roman and greek churches; and a collection of these and similar stories—wrongly but very naturally ascribed to a famous story-teller of the ancient greeks—has become the common property, the household literature, of all the nations of europe; and, under the name of ?sop’s fables, has handed down, as a first moral lesson-book for our children in the west, tales first invented to please and to instruct our far-off cousins in the distant east.

so the story of the migration of the stories is the most marvelous story of them all.[2] and, strange to say, in spite of the enormous outpouring of more modern tales, these old ones have not, even yet, lost their charm. i used to tell them by the hour together, to mixed audiences, and never found them fail. out of the many hundred birth-stories there are only a small proportion that are suitable for children. miss shedlock, so well known on both sides of the atlantic for her skill and judgment in this regard, has selected those she deems most suitable; and, so far as i can judge, has succeeded very admirably in adapting them for the use of children and of teachers alike. much depends, no doubt, upon the telling. could miss shedlock herself be the teller, there would be little doubt of the success. but i know from my own experience that less able story-tellers have no cause at all to be discouraged.

2. for the details of this story the introduction to my buddhist birth stories may be consulted; and for the history of the jatakas in india the chapter on that subject in my buddhist india.

the reason is, indeed, not far to seek. the stories are not ordinary ones. it is not on sharpness of repartee, or on striking incidents, that their charm depends. these they have sometimes. but their attraction lies rather in a unique mixture of subtle humor, cunning make-belief, and earnestness; in the piquancy of the contrast between the humorous incongruities and impossibilities of the details, and the real serious earnestness, never absent but always latent, of the ethical tone. they never raise a boisterous laugh: only a quiet smile of delighted appreciation; and they leave a pleasant aroma behind them. to the child-mind the impossibilities are no impossibilities at all, they are merely delightful. and these quaint old-world stories will continue to appeal to children, young and old, as they have done, the world over, through the long centuries of the past.

t. w. rhys davids.