Note 109 — PART II. ON THE HISTORY OF THE BIRTH STORIES IN INDIA.

General Cunningham says (p. 52): “The former [Nāga Jātaka, i.e. Elephant Jātaka] is the correct name, as in the legend here represented Buddha is the King of the Elephants, and therefore the Jātaka, or Birth, must of necessity have been named after him.” As I have above pointed out (p. xli), the title of each Jātaka, or Birth Story, is chosen, not by any means from the character which the Bodisat fills in it, but indifferently from a variety of other reasons. General Cunningham himself gives the story called Isī-singga Jātaka (No. 7 in the above list), in which the ascetic after whom the Jātaka is named is not the Bodisat.