Jataka Tales: Rebirth Stories of the Buddha

Archive.org; T.W. Rhys Davids and Caroline A.F. Rhys Davids; Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

There are 31 Planes of Existence, broad categories of worlds, one might be reborn in.

Buddhist Birth-Stories: Jataka Tales

The 31 Planes of Existence

This translation of the Buddha's Jatakas, the Buddhist inspiration for the famous Aesop's Fables, includes a commentarial introduction entitled "The Story of the Lineage" (Nidanakatha).

It is translated from V. Fausböll's edition of the original Pali language text by early British scholar T.W. Rhys Davids. This is the new and revised edition by his Buddhist scholar wife, Mrs. Caroline A. F. Rhys Davids.

The Jātaka Tales are a body of literature from India and Central Asia about the past lives of the historical Gautama Buddha as the Bodhisatta ("Buddha-to-be").

These stories relate some previous lives of the Buddha as a human, deva, and animal form. The Bodhisatta, as the Buddha refers to himself prior to gaining enlightenment, reappears in various births as a king, merchant, outcast, deva, elephant, and so on—but, in whatever form, something happens then that mirrors what is happening now, and many of the people he is with in life he has met before with them often repeating a situation or habit.

In Theravada Buddhism, the Jatakas are in the Sutta Collection of the Pāli canon (Khuddaka Division).

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