Representation of Caṇḍālas in the Jātakas

Out of 547 Jātaka stories, eight describe the caṇḍālas. Out of these eight stories, half contain passing references about this social class, but at least four are stories where the protagonists themselves are caṇḍālas. In those four stories which are centred around this class, three are comparatively longer stories, including the famous Mātaṅga-Jātaka (No. 497). These are probably the most elaborate descriptions of this social group from the early historic period. Since the Mātaṅga-Jātaka is more elaborate and complex than the other stories and needs to be discussed separately, I will only discuss the rest of the seven stories here.

Before analysing these stories, it is pertinent to understand what we mean by the Jātakas and how this corpus took shape historically. This discussion is important because in this way we might get a clue for the diverse and sometimes contrary representations of the caṇḍālas in two different stories as well as within a single story.