DICTIONARY

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Definition[1]

Avadāna-śataka (Sanskrit, the hundred avadānas). A collection comprising one hundred avadāna tales. The tales are moral stories and fables from the Hīnayāna Buddhist tradition composed around the start of the first millennium, and the work forms part of an earlier evolving tradition including the Pāli Apadāna and other recently discovered Gandhārī materials. The authorship of the Avadāna-śataka is uncertain but its popularity resulted in a Chinese translation being made at a very early date. The work is divided into ten chapters each containing ten stories on a particular theme. The central preoccupation is with the consequences of good and evil deeds and their maturation and effect upon the doer in later lives. The Buddha himself is the hero of many of the tales in the manner of the Pāli Jātaka literature and reverence and devotion to him is undisguised. Other protagonists are Arhats, gods, and ghosts (preta), who are reaping the consequences of their moral or immoral deeds.

Source
A Dictionary of Buddhism, Oxford University Press, 2003, 2004 (which is available in electronic version from answer.com)
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