Includes notes and announcements of the Order of United Americans.

The Pali work, entitled 'the Jataka', the first volume of which is now presented to the reader in an English form, contains 550 Jatakas or Birth-stories, which are arranged in 22 nipatas or books. This division is roughly founded on the number of verses (gathas) which are quoted in each story; thus the first book contains 150 stories, each of which only quotes one verse, the second 100, each of which quotes two, the third and fourth 50 each, which respectively quote 3 and 4, and so on to the twenty-first with 5 stories, each of which quotes 80 verses, and the twenty-second with 10 stories, each quoting a still larger number. Each story opens with a preface called the paccuppannavatthu or 'story of the present', which relates the particular circumstances in the Buddha's life which led him to tell the birth-story and thus reveal some event in the long series of his previous existences as a bodhisatta or a being destined to attain Buddha-ship. This is volume 1, comprising the ‘Ekanipata.’.

The Jataka as we possess tells about the life of Buddha during some incarnation in one of his previous existences as a Bodhisatta (one being destined to enlightenment). Each separate story is embedded in a framework, which forms the story of the present. The present selection brings together the Jataka stories of the most widespread interest.

While from the north, the mighty Medo-Persian army threatens the very existence of the great Neo-Babylonian Empire; within the city of Babylon, a secretive and defiant resistance movement has set itself against the reckless overindulgent King, Belshazzar, and is collaborating with the Persians against him. Amidst the subterfuge and the stringent measures taken by the king to quell this rebellion, the princess and her lover Eli, a Hebrew, are struggling to make sense of a relationship marred by the huge social and religious gap which separates their two cultures and religions. They find themselves caught between the resistance and the invading Persians, and only manage to escape the chaos with the help of two dissonant palace officials and the leaders of the Hebrew community. Their escape, however is hampered by the injuries Eli has sustained at the hands of the palace guards and the princess is forced to leave Babylon without him. Later he sets out on the camel trail to find her, and after running the gauntlet between the desert and the Bedouin bandits, he eventually meets up with her on the camel trail to Jerusalem and their new adventure is about to begin.