Jataka Tales: Stories of the Buddha

In India there is an old belief that a person lives many lives, one after another. The old stories say that the Buddha lived many lives before his last one. Sometimes he was a man, and sometimes he was an animal. In every life he tried to be wise and kind. These stories are called the Jataka tales. The Buddha told them to his followers to teach them how to live.

Long ago, when King Brahmadatta ruled in the city of Benares, the future Buddha was born into a family of merchants. When he grew up, he traveled from town to town with five hundred carts full of goods to sell.

One day he came to a great desert. It was sixty miles across, and the sand was so fine that it ran through your fingers like water. When the sun was high, the sand became as hot as burning coal. No one could walk on it during the day.