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  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




  THE _G_ÂTAKAMÂLÂ

  OR

  GARLAND OF BIRTH-STORIES


  BY

  ÂRYA _S_ÛRA


  _TRANSLATED FROM THE SANSKRIT_

  BY

  J. S. SPEYER


  London
  HENRY FROWDE
  OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE
  AMEN CORNER, E.C.
  1895




EDITOR'S PREFACE.


After all the necessary preparations for the first and second series of
the _Sacred Books of the East_, consisting in all of forty-nine volumes,
with two volumes of _General Index_, had been completed, I still
received several offers of translations of important texts which I felt
reluctant to leave unpublished. As they were chiefly translations of
Buddhist texts, I mentioned the fact to several of my Buddhist friends,
and I was highly gratified when I was informed that H. M. the King of
Siam, being desirous that the true teaching of the Buddha should become
more widely known in Europe, had been graciously pleased to promise that
material support without which the publication of these translations
would have been impossible.

I therefore resolved to do what I could for helping to spread a more
correct knowledge of the religion of Buddha: but after the first three
volumes of this new Series of the Sacred Books of the Buddhists is
published, it will mainly depend on the interest which the public may
take in this work, whether it can be continued or not.

As long as my health allows me to do so I shall be quite willing to
continue what has been a labour of love to me during many years of my
life. It was not always an easy task. The constant correspondence with
my fellow-workers has taxed my time and my strength far more than I
expected. The difficulty was not only to select from the very large mass
of Sacred Books those that seemed most important and most likely to be
useful for enabling us to gain a correct view of the great religions of
the East, but to find scholars competent and willing to undertake the
labour of translation. I can perfectly understand the unwillingness of
most scholars to devote their time to mere translations. With every year
the translation of such works as the Veda or the Avesta, instead of
becoming easier, becomes really more perplexing and more difficult.
Difficulties of which we