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The Jataka stories are a significant body of works about the previous lives of Gautama Buddha. Many of these have been preserved in Sri Lanka in the Pali language. Others have been preserved in Tibet through Tibetan.
In the 6th century, some of the stories were translated to Persian at the command of the Zoroastrian king Khosrau I. This translation was later retranslated to Greek, Latin and Hebrew. Some people believe that they formed the basis for Aesop's Fables, Sindbad the Sailor and The Arabian Nights.
See also: Prince SattvaPrince Sattva was one of the previous incarnations of Gautama Buddha, according to the jataka stories. The son of King Maharatha, he is said to have fed himself alive to a group of hungry tigers, out of compassion. The story has become a popular subject o
Buddhist textsBuddhist texts come in a huge variety of shapes and sizes. Buddhists place varying value on texts: attitudes range from worship of the text itself, to dismissal of texts as falsification of the ineffable truth. Texts can be divided up in a number of ways,