A further question of importance in determining the age of the Ramayana is its relation to Buddhistic literature. Now, the story of Rama is found in a somewhat altered form in one of the Pali Birth-Stories, the Daçaratha Jataka. As this version confines itself to the first part of Rama's adventures, his sojourn in the forest, it might at first sight seem to be the older of the two. There is, however, at least an indication that the second part of the story, the expedition to Lanka, was also known to the author of the Jataka; for while Valmiki's poem concludes with the reunion of Rama and Sita, the Jataka is made to end with the marriage of the couple after the manner of fairy tales, there being at the same time traces that they were wedded all along in the original source of the legend. Moreover, a verse from the old part of the Ramayana (vi. 128) actually occurs in a Pali form embedded in the prose of this Jataka. It might, indeed, be inferred from the greater freedom with which they handle the çloka metre that the canonical Buddhistic writings are older than the Ramayana, in which the çloka is of the classical Sanskrit type. But, as a matter of fact, these Pali works on the whole observe the laws of the classical çloka, their metrical irregularities being most probably caused by the recent application of Pali to literary purposes as well as by the inferior preservation of Pali works. On the other hand, Buddhistic literature early made use of the Arya metre, which, though so popular in classical Sanskrit poetry, is not yet to be found in the Sanskrit epics. The only mention of Buddha in the Ramayana occurs in a passage which is evidently interpolated. Hence the balance of the evidence in relation to Buddhism seems to favour the pre-Buddhistic origin of the genuine Ramayana. The question whether the Greeks were known to the author of our epic is, of course, also of chronological moment. An examination of the poem shows that the Yavanas (Greeks) are only mentioned twice, once in Book I. and once in a canto of Book IV., which Professor Jacobi shows to be an interpolation. The only conclusion to be drawn from this is that the additions to the original poem were made some time after 300 B.C. Professor Weber's assumption of Greek influence in the story of the Ramayana seems to lack foundation. For the tale of the abduction of Sita and the expedition to Lanka for her recovery has no real correspondence with that of the rape of Helen and the Trojan war. Nor is there any sufficient reason to suppose that the account of Rama bending a powerful bow in order to win Sita was borrowed from the adventures of Ulysses. Stories of similar feats of strength for a like object are to be found in the poetry of other nations besides the Greeks, and could easily have arisen independently.