INTRODUCTION 5. While the influence exercised by the great Buddha, the awaked and the awakener, is so universal, it is only natural that there should be a considerable curiosity all over the world to know more and more about his personality. The presnt story is a precursor of the life of Buddha. Tradition shows that the hero of the present story Devasena was a previous incarnation of Buddha and so the teaching to be gathered from such a story should be more or less identical with that of Buddha himself. 6. The principle of true altruism or living for the good of mankind, forms the key note of this story. This is carried to the utmost extreme as the story develops. The life of the individual is readily sacrificed for the good of the State, and as the King, a benign King, is represented as a true father of the State, the sacrifice of the individual life in the interests of the King follows as a natural consequence. Such a sacrifice forms the central idea of the story'. As the story practically ends in incidents more or less similar to the morally tragic end of " General Nogi" and of his "Faithful Wife" the two ideal personages of Japan, at the death of their great. King, the universally lamented " Mikado " the late ". Emperor of Japan, " the author has with much justification styled his
