Rama

===Buddhism===
[[File:Bharhut Dasaratha Jataka.jpg|thumb|Scene from Dasaratha Jataka, [[Bharhut]], c. 200-300 CE]]
The ''Dasaratha-Jataka'' (Tale no. 461) provides a version of the Rama story. It calls ''Rama'' as ''Rama-pandita''.<ref name="Francis325" /><ref name="cowell78" />

At the end of this ''Dasaratha-Jataka'' discourse, the Buddhist text declares that the Buddha in his prior rebirth was Rama:

{{Blockquote|The Master having ended this discourse, declared the Truths, and identified the Birth (...): 'At that time, the king Suddhodana was king Dasaratha, Mahamaya was the mother, [[Rahula]]'s mother was Sita, Ananda was Bharata, and I myself was Rama-Pandita.
|Jataka Tale No. 461|Translator: W.H.D. Rouse<ref name=cowell78/>}}

While the Buddhist Jataka texts co-opt Rama and make him an incarnation of [[Buddha]] in a previous life,<ref name="cowell78" /> the Hindu texts co-opt the Buddha and make him an [[avatar]] of [[Vishnu]].<ref>{{cite book |author=Bassuk |first=Daniel E |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=k3iwCwAAQBAJ |title=Incarnation in Hinduism and Christianity: The Myth of the God-Man |date=1987 |publisher=[[Macmillan Publishers|Palgrave Macmillan]] |isbn=978-1-349-08642-9 |pages=40 |access-date=9 April 2017 |archive-date=31 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240131063255/https://books.google.com/books?id=k3iwCwAAQBAJ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author=Edward Geoffrey Parrinder |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VkV5AAAAMAAJ |title=Avatar and Incarnation: The Divine in Human Form in the World's Religions |publisher=Oxford: Oneworld |year=1997 |isbn=978-1-85168-130-3 |pages=19–24, 35–38, 75–78, 130–133}}</ref> The ''[[Jataka tales|Jataka]]'' literature of Buddhism is generally dated to be from the second half of the 1st millennium BCE, based on the carvings in caves and Buddhist monuments such as the [[Bharhut]] stupa.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Claus |first1=Peter J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ienxrTPHzzwC&pg=PA306 |title=South Asian Folklore: An Encyclopedia |last2=Diamond |first2=Sarah |last3=Mills |first3=Margarat |publisher=[[Taylor & Francis]] |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-415-93919-5 |pages=306–307}}</ref>{{refn|group=lower-greek|Richard Gombrich suggests that the Jataka tales were composed by the 3rd century BCE.<ref>{{cite book|author=Naomi Appleton|title=Jātaka Stories in Theravāda Buddhism: Narrating the Bodhisatta Path |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=86Kaus872e0C&pg=PA51 |year=2010|publisher=Ashgate Publishing |isbn=978-1-4094-1092-8|pages=51–54}}</ref>}} The 2nd-century BCE stone [[relief]] carvings on Bharhut stupa, as told in the ''Dasaratha-Jataka'', is the earliest known non-textual evidence of Rama story being prevalent in ancient India.<ref>{{cite book |author=Mandakranta Bose |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=F_vuoXvAUfQC&pg=PA337 |title=The Ramayana Revisited |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-19-803763-7 |pages=337–338}}</ref>