The Jātaka Book is not the only Pāli Commentary which has made use of the ancient Birth Stories. They occur in numerous passages of the different exegetical works composed in Ceylon, and the only commentary of which anything is known in print, that on the Dhamma-padaŋ or ‘Collection of Scripture Verses,’ contains a considerable number of them. Mr. Fausböll has published copious extracts from this Commentary, which may be by Buddhaghosa, as an appendix to his edition of the text; and the work by Captain Rogers, entitled ‘Buddhaghosa’s Parables’--a translation from a Burmese book called ‘Dhammapada-vatthu’ (that is ’Stories connected with the Dhamma-padaŋ’)--consists almost entirely of Jātaka tales. In Siam there is even a rival collection of Birth Stories, which is called PAṆṆĀSA-JĀTAKAŊ (’The Fifty Jātakas’), and of which an account has been given us by M. Léon Feer;[79] and the same scholar has pointed out that isolated stories, not contained in our collection, are also to be found in the Pāli literature of that country.[80] The first hundred and fifty tales in our collection are divided into three _Paṇṇāsas_, or fifties;[81] but the Siamese collection cannot be either of these, as M. Feer has ascertained that it contains no tales beginning in the same way as any of those in either of these three ‘Fifties.’ In India itself the Birth Stories survived the fall, as some of them had probably preceded the rise, of Buddhism. Not a few of them were preserved by being included in the Mahā Bhārata, the great Hindu epic which became the storehouse of Indian mythology, philosophy, and folk-lore.[82] Unfortunately, the date of the final arrangement of the Mahā Bhārata, is extremely uncertain, and there is no further evidence of the continued existence of the Jātaka tales till we come to the time of the work already frequently referred to--the Pancha Tantra. It is to the history of this book that Professor Benfey has devoted that elaborate and learned Introduction which is the most important contribution to the study of this class of literature as yet published; and I cannot do better than give in his own words his final conclusions as to the origin of this popular storybook:[83]--