The Jatakas represent the stories of the previous births of the Enlightened One, which throw ample light on different aspects of ancient Indian history. Hence the Jataka literature is considered to be an important source material for understanding the social conditions of pre-Buddhist India.
According to a tradition, there were 550 Jätaka stories originally composed in pali. which were taken to Ceylon by Mahendra, the son of Asaka the Great, about 250 B.C., and the commentary was retranslated into puli by Buddhaghosa in 5 century A.D. Through this commentary, the texts of Jatakas have come down to us. Some scholars say that Somadeva, a writer in the early centuries of the Christian era, composed Kathasaritsagara based on the firhatkatha of Gunadhya in which many Jatakas were incorporated. Some of them were carried to the distant lands as composed in the Puncatantra Whatever the case may be, the text of the commentary was first edited by Dr. Fausboll who categorized the text into three major component elements; viz., the tale, the frame, and the verbal interpretation. Considering it the oldest, most complete, and most important collection of folklore, Rhys Davids translated it in the year 1880. Later, a host of scholars like W. R. D. Rouse, H. T. Francis, and R. A. Neil worked on it and the first volume of their translation appeared in 1895 under the editorship of E B.Cowell.
In the same century, Kern published Jatakamala in the year 1891. Later J. S. Speyer in the year 1895 translated Aryasura's Jatakamala (garland of birth stories) into English. He says that the Aryasura's Jatakamala has higher pretension and is a kind of kavya style, a work of art and it was used by the Northern Buddhists, whereas the pali Jataka is in simple prose style, followed by the Buddhists of south India. Similarly, three decades later, the Royal Asiatic Society published the translation of another great work namely Avadanakalpalata in the year 1920.
Several scholars have studied the Jätaka literature from various angles. Richard Fick has studied these Jatakas from the social point of view, keeping always in view, the caste and the priest. Roy Chaudhary has studied these stories to draw the political history of ancient India. Rhys Davids and N. S. Subba Rao have studied and drawn the economic conditions that prevailed during the early centuries of the Christian era. Beni Prasad in his work. The State in Ancient India has exhaustively dealt with the administrative aspects. B.C. Sen in his work, Studies in Jatakas, has drawn political and administrative matters. Ratilal N. Mehta in his work, Pre-Buddhist India, studied the Jatakas from several aspects such as a political, administrative, economic, social, and geographical survey of ancient India.
The epochal discovery of the Jataka panels in sculpture by Sir Alexander Cunningham more than a century ago, at Bharhut, has opened a line of inquiry and continued by several scholars, especially Foucher and Barua. Foucher described the Jataka stories depicted in Torana reliefs at Sanchi. Barua gave an accurate identification of the Jatakas at Bharhut with the Jataka text. Winternitz, who observed the depiction of Jatakas on the stupas at Bharhut and Sanchi, commented that the sculptors have followed the prose version and so they are of pre-Buddhist origin.
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