When Japanese children look at the full moon, they see a hare drawn on it. However, few know the Buddhist fable that tells of a hare being a reincarnation of Buddha, drawn there by Sakka, the king of the gods, as an eternal tribute to his wisdom. Similar to how Aesop's fables are known in the West since childhood without much knowledge of the Greek writer, this fable, and many others called Jātaka, originated millennia ago in India and were transmitted orally throughout Asia at the same time as Buddhism. They narrate the past lives of Prince Siddhartha, from one reincarnation to the next, until he became Buddha.

Lion, tortoise, golden bird, winged horse, hermit, merchant, deity… the adventures of the Buddha’s many identities are countless, but all are united by the thread of piety, the pursuit of wisdom, and the purification of karma, and by the simplicity and clarity of his message. These twenty fables—translated directly from the Pāḷi texts in which they were compiled in the 5th century CE—are a precious selection from this cultural treasure that we are sure will be enjoyed by children and adults alike, scholars and the merely curious, in this and all their future lives.