Transcriber's Notes:
Blank pages have been eliminated.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as in theoriginal.
A few typographical errors have been corrected.
The book utilizes letter spacing for emphasis. Because letter spacing is not possiblein some book readers, it has been replaced by bold font on the epub format.
THE
SACRED BOOKS OF THE BUDDHISTS
Oxford
HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
SACRED BOOKS OF THE BUDDHISTS
TRANSLATED
BY VARIOUS ORIENTAL SCHOLARS
AND EDITED BY
F. MAX MÜLLER
PUBLISHED UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF
HIS MAJESTY CHULÂLANKARANA, KING OF SIAM
VOL. I
London
HENRY FROWDE
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE
AMEN CORNER, E.C.
1895
OR
GARLAND OF BIRTH-STORIES
BY
ÂRYA SÛRA
TRANSLATED FROM THE SANSKRIT
BY
J. S. SPEYER
London
HENRY FROWDE
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE
AMEN CORNER, E.C.
1895
After all the necessary preparations for the first andsecond series of the Sacred Books of the East, consistingin all of forty-nine volumes, with two volumes of GeneralIndex, had been completed, I still received severaloffers of translations of important texts which I feltreluctant to leave unpublished. As they were chieflytranslations of Buddhist texts, I mentioned the fact toseveral of my Buddhist friends, and I was highly gratifiedwhen I was informed that H. M. the King of Siam,being desirous that the true teaching of the Buddhashould become more widely known in Europe, hadbeen graciously pleased to promise that material supportwithout which the publication of these translationswould have been impossible.
I therefore resolved to do what I could for helpingto spread a more correct knowledge of the religionof Buddha: but after the first three volumes of thisnew Series of the Sacred Books of the Buddhists ispublished, it will mainly depend on the interest whichthe public may take in this work, whether it can be continuedor not.
As long as my health allows me to do so I shallbe quite willing to continue what has been a labourof love to me during many years of my life. It wasnot always an easy task. The constant correspondencewith my fellow-workers has taxed my time and mystrength far more than I expected. The difficultywas not only to select from the very large mass ofSacred Books those that seemed most important[viii]and most likely to be useful for enabling us to gaina correct view of the great religions of the East, butto find scholars competent and willing to undertakethe labour of translation. I can perfectly understandthe unwillingness of most scholars to devote their timeto mere translations. With every year the translationof such works as the Veda or the Avesta, instead ofbecoming easier, becomes really more pe