Richard Salomon described them as "stories, usually narrated by the Buddha, that illustrate the workings of
karma by revealing the acts of a particular individual in a previous life and the results of those actions in his or her present life."[2]
This literature includes around 600 stories in the
Pāli language
Apadāna ("Legends"). There are also a large number in
Sanskrit collections, of which the chief are the
Mahāsāṃghika's Mahāvastu ("Great Book") and the
Sarvāstivāda's Avadānaśataka (Century of Legends) and Divyāvadāna (The Heavenly Legend).[3] These latter collections include accounts relating to
Gautama Buddha and the third-century BCE "righteous ruler,"
Ashoka.[4]
Amongst the most popular avadānas of Northern Hinayāna Buddhism are:
Ratnamālāvadāna,[5] which is a collection of stories about traveling merchants.
the story of
Sudhana, preserved in the Mahāvastu under the title Kinnarī jātaka, amongst others, who falls in love with a
kinnarī and saves her life.
the Vessantara Jātaka, the story of the compassionate prince who gives away everything he owns, including his wife and children, thereby displaying the virtue of perfect charity.
Though of later date than most of the canonical Buddhist books, avadānas are held in veneration by the orthodox, and occupy much the same position with regard to Buddhism that the
Puranas do towards
Hinduism.[3] They act in a similar way to other texts describing past deeds or past lives held in other traditions in the region, such as the aforementioned Puranas, the
Dasam Granth and
Janamsakhis of
Sikhism, and the
Kalpa Sūtra of
Jainism.
Jatakas - Type of Buddhist literature, stories about the past lives of Buddha
References
^While avadāna (Sanskrit) and apadāna (Pali) are cognates, the former refers to a broad literature, including both canonical and non-canonical material from multiple Buddhist schools, while the latter refers explicitly to a late addition to
Theravada Buddhism's
Pāli Canon's
Khuddaka Nikaya.
^Padmanabh S. Jaini, "The Story of Sudhana and Manoharā: An Analysis of the Texts and the Borobudur Reliefs", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 29, No. 3 (1966), pp. 533-558.