Vessantarāgīti

The Song of Vessantara — the last and greatest of the birth stories retold in verse: the story recited above all others in the Theravāda countries, in which the Bodhisatta perfects giving by giving away his children and his wife.

The text breaks off unfinished. It runs to some 2,600 verses and then simply stops in the middle of the narrative, with Vessantara turning away in grief to look for the servants. There is no closing verse, no colophon and no scribal note, so there is nothing in it to date it by or to name its author with. No date can be given.

A scan of its opening and closing found no ganthārambhakathā and no place name anywhere in it, and no source on file names the work. The silence is the text's own, not the searching's.