The Doctrine of metempsychosis has played an important part in the history of the national character and religious ideas and we find that the Buddhist literature from the earliest times has always included the ages of the past as an authentic background to the founder's historical life as Gautama. The Jatakas are the stories of he Buddha's former birth and the character representing the Buddha in these stories is called the Bodhisatta or the Potential Buddha or the being who is destined to obtain enlightenment. T. W. Rhys-Davids says that the Jataka contains a record of the everyday life, and every-day thought, of the people among whom the tales were told: it is the oldest most complete, and most important collection of folk-lore extant.
