When the Teacher had finished this discourse, showing that "Not now only, O mendicants, has this man been outwitted by the country robe-maker, long ago he was outwitted in the same way," he established the connexion, and summed up the Jātaka, by saying, "At that time he [the crane] was the Jetavana robe-maker, the crab was the country robe-maker, but the Genius of the Tree was I myself."
The part in italics is called "The Story of the Present," and that in ordinary type is "The Story of the Past," of which the verses (gatha) in old Pali probably formed the literary nucleus, and were handed on as a peg on which the stories hung. Both the stories were ultimately written down as a commentary on the verses with the first line of which the Jataka begins.
On the wide extension this story has found when divorced from its connection with the Buddha, see note in Analytical Table of Contents, infra, p. lxxiv. It is to be found in the Morall Philosophie, pp. 118-22, and considering that it has passed through more than a thousand years, and no less than seven languages on its way from Pali to English, it has preserved its identity with remarkable success.
The illustration is from the editio princeps of the Latin (reduced), and, as I have shown, has a traditional connection with the story in its Indian form, and may one day, I hope, be traced to a rock carving representing this very Jataka, on one of the Buddhist stupas.
