Cowell from the Pali Text Society This story the Master told in Jetavana about a landowner whose father was dead. 461 (The Buddhist story of Rama)(translation by Prof. Hi Bhante, "I have not been able to find the Dasaratha Jataka on the internet." This might be what you are looking for: " Dasaratha Jataka No.
I have not been able to find the Dasaratha Jataka on the internet. If you are interested in reading the Ramayana (and you have 6 month to spare) have a look at where you will find the Sanskrit text and a word by word translation of it with notes. It is nowhere near as long (is any poem?), it lacks its narrative charm and excitement, and its didactic elements are much more limited. Having said all this, it is also true to say that the Dasaratha Jataka is not a literary masterpiece and Valmiki’s Ramayana definitely is. I strongly suspect that the exile of Vessantra as told in the Vessantra Jataka (No 549) was the inspiration for Rama and Sita’s exile in Valmiki’s Ramayana, although I don’t know what scholars say about this. For example, the story of King Sibi giving his eyes to the blind man (Jataka No 499) is there. Now reading Valmiki’s Ramayana (and I confess to not having read it all) one discovers little bits of Buddhism popping up here and there throughout it. For example, Rama and Sita are siblings, not husband and wife Dasaratha does not banish them but sends them away to protect them from their jealous step-mother they are exiled to the Himalayas, not to Dandaka in the Deccan there is no reference to Lanka or Ravana Rama and Sita return to Benares not to Ayodhya after their exile, and somewhat uncomfortably, they then marry. Now although the Dasaratha Jataka is immediately identifiable as a version of the Ramayana it differs greatly from most other versions. It’s called the Dasaratha Jataka, Dasaratha being of course Rama’s father. The earliest version of the great epic is the Buddhist one, the one found in the Jatakas (No 461). Now this is a Buddhist blog so what am I doing going on about the Ramayana? Well, here is another fact that I suspect you didn’t know. What the Bible is to Europe, the Ramayanas are to India and wide areas of south-east Asia. All kings of the present ruling dynasty of Thailand take the throne name Rama, not Siddhattha, Suddhodana or even Buddhadasa. The former capital of Thailand was named Ayodhya, after Rama’s home town, not Kapilavatthu. And Thailand? Go to Wat Phra Keo, the most important Buddhist temple in the country, and it is not the life of the Buddha that is depicted on the walls of the passageway around the main shrine but scenes from the Thai Ramayana, the Ramakien. Tulsi Das’ rendering would easily be the most widely read book ever written in Hindi, It could be plausibly argued that the Indonesian Ramayana has had more influence on that country’s art, sculpture, architecture and literature than Islam has had. They have left their mark on nearly every aspect of Indian life. None of this detracts from the Ramayana’s, or more correctly, the Ramayanas, importance, their influence has been enormous. The Malay Ramayana, Hikayat Seri Rama, and the Lao version, Phra Lak Phra Lam, make Lakshmana the hero and Rama his sidekick. In some versions Sita is Rama’s sister, not his wife. In one version Ravana is the hero, not Rama. And when I say different, I mean really different.
The Thai Ramayana differs greatly from the Indonesian one, not just in what it says but in its story line, and both are very different from Valmiki’s. Then of course there is the Jain Ramayana, which other than following the rough outline of Valmiki’s is an entirely independent work. Some of the other versions of the R amayana are the so-called Southern, the Western, the Southern and the North-Western Recensions. Valmiki used an earlier Ramayana, perhaps several of them, as the basis of his own great work. But there is no good reason for doing this other than that Valmiki’s Ramayana is the most widely known version in northern India, that its contents are the most detailed and interesting and that its language is exceptional. This is considered the Ramayana, the standard one, the one by which all the others are judged. The most well-known is the one composed by Valmiki in 24,000 verses. What most people do not know is that there is no one texts called the Ramayana but many of them. It tells the story of Rama and Sita, their exile and their triumphant return. Although they are unlikely to have ever read it, most people probably know that the Ramayana is one of the two great Indian epics and is considered a sacred texts by Hindus.
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