The story of Vessantara is popular all over Buddhist Asia. “In the Theravāda Buddhist countries” of Southern Asia, say Cone and Gombrich, “even the biography of the Buddha is not better known.” In Burma, “taught to every schoolboy, alluded to frequently in conversation, recounted repeatedly in sermons, and – even more important – regularly enacted in dramatic form as part of the standard fare of the itinerant Burmese repertory groups, the story of Prince Vessantara is probably the best known and most loved of all Buddhist stories” (Spiro 1971: 108). For Keyes, “three texts – or, more properly, several versions of three texts – define for most Thai Buddhists today, as in traditional Siam, the basic parameters of a Therāvadin view of the world.” They are the Three Worlds Treatise (General Introduction II.c), the story of the elder Māleyya, (5.2.c and Appendix 4), and the Vessantara Jātaka. The story of Vessantara, he says (1987: 181)

is known widely throughout Thailand to this day. It is frequently presented to the populace in the form of a sermon, typically in conjunction with a major festival; the story is also dramatized in folk opera and in theater; and scenes from it appear in art. In recent years, the Vessantara Jātaka has been used as the source of themes in modern fiction and has even been presented in a film version.