Jataka Stories - Legendary Biographies of Gautama Buddha in the Jatakatthavannana

This thesis deals with the possible interpretations of the jātaka stories (Buddhist sacred biographies genre). The author focuses on the Jātakatthavannana collection, part of the Pali canon, which is an important text for early and Theravada Buddhism. A characteristic feature of the jātaka is that Siddhartha Gautama of the Śākya clan, better known under his title Buddha, tells us about his previous births, in which He is called Bodhisattva. In accord with Buddhist cosmology, Bodhisattva is born in different forms: as human, animal and mythical creatures. In the jātaka stories symbolic links can be seen to the psychological, social, ethical, political, religious and philosophical themes of cultures in which they were told. In the early jātaka motives known from fables and mythologies of other cultures are also found. Their meaning, however, is given another shade or is completely different. The semantic value of themes is largely determined by the position they have in the configuration of relations between symbols, which is different for different cultures (as is shown by the author on a particular case). Due to this fact, the author adopts two following approaches. First, the author does not strive to find the original form of the jātaka tales and is not interested in their linguistic development...