Question map
The story Gandatindu Jataka was written in which language?
Explanation
The Gandatindu Jataka is a story written in the Pali language [1]. It is part of the Jataka tales, a collection of Buddhist literature that narrates the previous births of the Buddha as a Bodhisattva. These stories were originally popular oral tales that were later committed to writing in Pali around the middle of the first millennium CE [1]. The Gandatindu Jataka specifically describes the plight of subjects living under a wicked king in the kingdom of Kampilla, highlighting the suffering of elderly people, cultivators, and even animals [1]. As a canonical Buddhist text, it belongs to the Khuddaka Nikaya of the Sutta Pitaka. While some Jataka stories were later translated into other languages like Sinhalese or Sanskrit, the primary original literary language for the Jataka collection, including the Gandatindu Jataka, is Pali [1].
Sources
- [1] THEMES IN INDIAN HISTORY PART I, History CLASS XII (NCERT 2025 ed.) > Chapter 2: Kings, Farmers and Towns > 5.1 Popular perceptions of kings > p. 38