The continued success of the "Jataka Tales," as retold and published
ten years ago, has led to this second and companion volume. Who that
has read or told stories to children has not been lured on by the
subtle flattery of their cry for "more"?

Dr. Felix Adler, in his Foreword to "Jataka Tales," says that long ago
he was "captivated by the charm of the Jataka Tales." Little children
have not only felt this charm, but they have discovered that they can
read the stories to themselves. And so "More Jataka Tales" were found
in the volume translated from the Sanskrit into English by a group of
Cambridge scholars and published by the University Press.

The Jataka tales, regarded as historic in the Third Century B. C., are
the oldest collection of folk-lore extant. They come down to us from
that dim far-off time when our forebears told tales around the same
hearth fire on the roof of the world. Professor Rhys Davids speaks of
them as "a priceless record of the childhood of our race. The same
stories are found in Greek, Latin, Arabic, Persian, and in most
European languages. The Greek versions of the Jataka tales were
adapted and ascribed to the famous storyteller, Aesop, and under his
name handed down as a continual feast for the children in the
West,--tales first invented to please and instruct our far-off cousins
in the East." Here East, though East, meets West!

A "Guild of Jataka Translators," under Professor E. B. Cowell,
professor of Sanskrit in the University of Cambridge, brought out the
complete edition of the Jataka between 1895 and 1907. It is from this
source that "Jataka Tales" and "More Jataka Tales" have been retold.