Jātismara (Sanskrit: जातिस्मर) means - recollecting a former existence or birth. Such recollection is believed to be a talent which great saints possessed or cultivated. In the Buddhist Nikāya and Āgama literature there is reference to jātismara as first of the three vidyās ('sciences'), as the fourth of the five abhijñās ('superknowledges') and as the eighth of the ten tathagātadaśabala (powers of a tathagata); it is listed as a faculty connected with the higher stages of meditation as a yogic attainment through control of the body and purity of body and conduct, as the result of abiding in a particular samādhi. The Mahayāna Buddhist literature refers to jātismara not as an individual's meditational development but as effected by a Bodhisattva for improving religious life, or as a religio