This is basically a reproduction of the Burmese Chaṭṭha Saṅgāyana edition of the Jātaka-aṭṭhakathā, as printed in the transcript and made available in the software Cst4. Here though I have considerably reprocessed the documents in several ways, which I will now describe.

In the original edition, we fairly often get a heading and comment such as:

Ja 170: Kakaṇṭakajātakavaṇṇanā

Nāyaṁ pure uṇṇamatī ti idaṁ kakaṇṭakajātakaṁ mahāumaṅgajātake (Ja. 542) āvi bhavissati. (He didn’t prosper before means this Chameleon Birth Story will be made clear in the Birth Story about the Great Tunnel).

which is then immediately followed by the closing heading:

Kakaṇṭakajātakavaṇṇanā dasamā

Here I have identified the section referred to in the Umaṅgajātaka, and included it in its proper place so the student doesn’t have to go and search through the commentary. These inserts are distinguished by marking them in a different color from the surrounding text, so it can be clearly seen where they begin and end. Very occasionally abbreviations like this in the commentary point to sections where the verses they are commenting on are not found. In this case I have brought them in from the Mūla and placed them in square brackets and again distinguished them by color (note, however, that I have not included all internal cross-references, which are more than 100, as in most cases this is not been necessary).

All internal references to other books have been standardized to international norms of reference. So, for instance, what was referenced as “saṃ. ni. 5.139; a. ni. 4.34” in the original, is here presented as “SN. 5.139; AN. 4.34” (which means Saṁyuttanikāya Bk 5, Sutta 139; Aṅguttaranikāya Nipāta 4, Sutta 34). For a full list of abbreviations see below.

These references are fairly easy to identify, even in their original format, but the internal ones to the Jātakas and their commentary were not, and I have replaced these with updated references also, so that, for instance “jā. 2.17.39” is now “JA 521.39” (= Tesakuṇajātakaṁ, vs. 39). We also find references such as “jā. 1.12.13 ādayo”. What this means is: “Jā 465, from the beginning”. Here I just reference it as Jā 465 (from the beginning being taken for granted).

Other reformatting that I have made include replacing double quotation marks with curly quotation marker (“ & ”), and replacing the niggahita ṃ with Unicode/ISO compliant ṁ. Where I have been able to identify it – and there is quite a bit of inconsistency still as I was unable to proof read the whole text – then the quotation marker has been separated from the word/phrase it quotes, so that, e.g. “ubbiggahadayāti” becomes “ubbiggahadayā ti”, as it is not in fact in sandhi, as the original indicates. Quotations that end in the nasal, such as “kattabba’’nti” are reformatted to read “kattabban”-ti”, as the original division separates the nasal end of the word from the word itself, making it look like the word ends in a vowel and the quotation marker is somehow “nti”, both of which are wrong.

Headings have been formatted better in this edition, so that what is written in plain text as “[141] 1. Godhājātakavaṇṇanā” in the original, is here presented as a proper, identifiable heading, with the internal, and unnecessary vagga number omitted, like this:

Ja 141. Godhājātakavaṇṇanā

The equivalent PTS page number is here inserted, although it should be noted that the text of PTS often disagrees with the Burmese text. I think this is useful for students who want to compare Fausböll’s edition with the one presented here.

Ānandajoti Bhikkhu,
October, 2020

 

Note to Version 2

For the past year I have been preparing a new version of the English translation of the Jātaka stories, and while doing that I found it necessary to update the content and presentation in the text here also, so this is now a much improved Version 2, with all the missing sections inserted, and with some corrections to the earlier edition.

I have now updated the formatting also to match the English translation. In this version the openings (paccupannavatthu) and closings (samodhāna) of the text, which are in dark-red, to distinguish them the story of the past (atītavatthu), which is presented in black. All additions, brought in from other places, are now placed in italic, whether they belong to the opening (dark red italic), or the story of the past (black italic).

The word-commentary on the verses, which was not translated into English, is placed here in smaller type, is indented and written in green type to help identify it. A verse and its commentary look like this, with the words commented on in bold type:

One of the changes introduced in this edition is in the numbering of the verses of the Jātakas. Previously they started at the beginning of one of the seven books, and continued sequentially to the end of the book. Here they are numbered from the beginning of each of the Jātakas. All cross references have been similarly updated to reflect this change.

I have also included the equivalent PTS page number in the form {vol.page}, so that cross-referencing is facilitated.

Ānandajoti Bhikkhu,
August, 2021

 

Abbreviations

All numbers refer to the Burmese edition of the texts, and may differ from PTS and other editions, as there is no standard agreed upon across traditions.

 

First Section

last updated: August 2021