By Eric Van Horn

The Jātaka Tales are part of the Pāli Buddhist Canon. They are the tenth volume in the Khuddaka Nikāya (“Minor collection”) which is the fifth of the five collections in the Canon. They are the Buddhist equivalent of Aesop’s Fables. They are morality stories. By tradition these are the stories of the Buddha’s previous lives. In the Buddhist cultures of the past, these were the stories that children grew up hearing. They were the popular entertainment. Families would gather together in the evening after the day’s work was done and share these tales. And it is from these stories that people learned about the standards of conduct for followers of the Buddha.