German blurbs for Jataka stories complete

Thanks to the hard work of Ven. @Sabbamitta Silashin, there are now German language blurbs for all 547 Jataka stories. When your site language is set to German, you can now see them on the suttaplex cards:

https://suttacentral.net/ja?view=normal

You can also see (and use!) the raw data file that contains them all:

These were created by Ven. @Sabbamitta from scratch by reading the complete translation of all the Jataka stories (over 760k words in the English translation). The corresponding English blurbs are (as I understand) just a copy paste of the first two lines of each story. So in this respect the German side of the site surpasses the English. :tada:

The inclusion of the Jataka stories on SuttaCentral is a bit of an anomaly. Generally the verses are considered canonical and the stories (and the word definitions) are considered comentarial.

It’s easy to forget the presence of these blurbs and the hard work that goes into their creation. And the fact that not only are they CC0, but that the architecture of the site allows for them to be reused either through the APIs or simply by downloading the well formed JSON files means that they contribute to greater access to the suttas and the teachings of the Buddha.

Sadhu Sadhu!!!

14 Likes

Thank you for the announcement, Bhante @Snowbird!

I have to admit, it was in fact fascinating to read all the Jataka stories.

English translation? :pray:

And I am wondering whether there is some English speaker who understands German who would be interested in making an English translation of these blurbs. So as to allow English to catch up with German again 
 :wink:

8 Likes

They are indeed amazing. Personally I feel more connected to the Dhammapada commentary stories, perhaps because my teacher used them more. But the Jatakas should not be missed.

1 Like

:raised_hand: it me, I did that! Ahh, the wisdom of my father, who told me, “If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing even badly.” Actually the first couple of sentences provide a reasonable summary in many cases, but of course far inferior to a proper job.

2 Likes

Alternatively one might use the Jātaka entries in Malalasekera’s Dictionary of Pali Proper Names. Some would need truncating, but most are already just a paragraph or two:

Abhiáč‡ha Jātaka (No.27)

The story of a dog and an elephant who grew up to be great friends and became indispensable to each other. The dog used to amuse himself by swinging backwards and forwards on the elephant’s trunk. One day the merchant sold the dog. The elephant went off his food and would not be consoled until the dog was brought back.

The story was told in reference to two monks of Sāvatthi who were very intimate with one another and spent all their time together. J.i.189 f.

Ādiccupaáč­áč­hāna Jātaka (No.175)

The story of a monkey who used to visit the hermitage of some ascetics whose leader was the Bodhisatta; when they were away in the village, he upset everything he could lay hands on, and did much damage generally. When the ascetics were about to return from the village to the hermitage after the rainy season, the people brought them various foods, and the monkey, thinking to get some for himself, stood outside their hut worshipping the sun. The people, impressed by the monkey’s holy demeanour, started praising his virtues, whereupon the Bodhisatta revealed to them his true character (J.ii.72‑3).

The story was related concerning a rogue.

2 Likes

In any case, someone would have to do it 
 :thinking:

Blurbs (from whichever source) would have to be inserted into the Bilara repository. Whoever would like to do this, be it by translating them from German, by copying them from a third party source (provided this is permitted by copyright), or by writing them from scratch would be most welcome! :pray:

1 Like

Indeed, but I’m not sure there’s an easy way to extract them.

2 Likes

Since the whole dictionary is digitalised and available on Ven Pesala’s website, it oughtn’t to be difficult (assuming that there’s no copyright issue).

If we allow a generous two minutes for the looking up, copying and pasting of each of the 547 Jātakas entries, it would be an 18-hour job. Maybe a little longer because of the need to précis the entries for the very long Jātakas. The only real challenge is that certain of the Jātakas are listed under a different name from that which they bear at Sutta Central.

1 Like

I started a new thread to discuss creation of English blurbs:

Please continue that conversation there.

3 Likes