Mahāvastu

The Mahāvastu, the ‘Great Story’, claims to be a vinaya, a word meaning ‘discipline’ and usually used for a collection of rules for monks or nuns. In fact, the Mahāvastu is  a long and rather chaotic biography of the Buddha compiled from oral and written sources between about the 2nd century BCE and the 3rd century CE. A veritable treasure house of legends, ballads, authentic historical information, devotional poetry and Dhamma teachings, it also contains numerous Jātaka stories, some from the Tipiṭaka, others unique to it.