Scenes from ten of the Buddha's previous lives

The arrangement of ten famous tales of the Buddha’s previous lives presented here—arranged in two columns of five squares—is unusual. The first story of the set is depicted at lower right and the others continue upward in an S curve.
In each of these stories the Buddha perfected a virtue such as truthfulness, loving-kindness, or generosity. The faithful took the stories as providing guidance in living a moral life.
Each story needed to be presented in abbreviated fashion as a single scene. Thus the long story of Mahajanaka (lower left) is represented only by the scene of a ship surrounded by sea creatures, with the main character clinging to the mast.

The sequence of the lives is indicated by the numbers.

1 Temiya, the Mute Prince

2 Mahajanaka, the Lost Prince

3 Sama, the Devoted Son

4 Nimi, the Noble King

5 Mahosadha, the Clever Sage

6 Bhuridatta, the Serpent Prince Sage

7 Chandakumara, the Honorable Prince

8 Narada, the Great Brahman

9 Vidhura, the Eloquent Sage

10 Vessantara, the Charitable Prince