Jataka

He cited a story from the “Jataka Tales,” a body of South Asian literature concerning the prior incarnations of the Buddha in human and animal form.

The venerable Kiribathgoda Gnanananda Thero, founder of the Mahamevnawa Buddhist Monastery in Sri Lanka, told me a story from the Jataka, an ancient book of poems about the Buddha's earlier lives.

Marionettes were used in the royal courts to dramatize Buddhist jataka tales, about the lives of Buddha.

The Ajanta murals tell the Jataka stories of the lives of the Buddha in images of supreme elegance and grace.

I realised that the greatest short story writer in South Asia was Buddha, where the stories of his previous lives were recounted as Jataka tales.