A Concordance of Buddhist Birth Stories.

• Position: Brief Reviews - Book Review

A Concordance of Buddhist Birth Stories, 3rd ed. By LESLIE GREY, M.D. Oxford: PALI TEXT SOCIETY, 2000. Pp. xiii + 622.

This third edition of the Concordance follows upon the first edition (1990) and the "second revised and enlarged edition" (1994). The heart of the book (pp. 1-496) lists the jatakas and avadanas treated in roman alphabetical order, identified by their location in the canonical Pali collection of the Suttapitaka (given by references to the Cowell translation and the Fausboll edition) or in G. Tucci's Tibetan Painted Scrolls (1949). The plot of each story is briefly summarized, with appended moral, and then there are listed, again alphabetically, references to (some) other versions of the story, including some of those outside the Buddhist (and indeed Asian) context, and to visual representations of it, as well as various translations of it and, to a lesser extent, secondary literature on it. The treatment ends, when applicable, with the folktale type (according to the Aarne/Thompson Types of the Folktale [1964]) and folk motif (according to the Thompson Motif-Index of Folk Literature [1958]). Following the alphabetical listing of the stories are a series of indices and the extensive bibliography to which the references in the alphabetical listing send the reader.

Needless to say, the volume is immensely useful, and it grants access to the richness of this story literature, especially to those not specializing in the jatakas. However, this work...