Saddharma Pundarika

SR No.: 007677
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: H Kern
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1884
Total Pages: 2546
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 46 MB

Page 1381

xxxiv
PAHLAVI TEXTS.
with the same variations derived from some other source. It commences with Nêryôsang's usual Sanskrit introduction, and at the end of the text it has the old Sanskrit colophon translated above, and supposed to belong to AK. And this is followed by a Persian colophon, written on the day Hörmazd of the month Bahman, A. Y. 1211 (corresponding to the 26th July 1842), and stating that this manuscript was copied from that of Åsadîn, son of Kaka, in Bombay, by Jamshed, son of Edalji, son of Bahmanji, son of the writer of JJ. From this it might be too hastily assumed that the old manuscript AK was still complete as recently as 1842 ; but, if such were the case, it would be difficult to understand why Dastûr Hôshangji could learn nothing about its missing moiety some twenty-five years afterwards, when he made searching enquiries on the subject; and it would be still more difficult to explain the variations in JE, already mentioned as derived from some other source than AK. It is more probable that the writer of JE found the old colophon of AK copied at the end of a more recent manuscript, which led him to believe that the latter was written by Åsadîn, son of Kaka.
That the first folio of AK had already been lost, considerably more than a century ago, appears from PB3, No. 3 of the Burnouf Collection in the National Library at Paris, which was evidently copied from a copy of AK, and is certainly more than a century old, judging from the general appearance of the paper on which it is written. This manuscript, which was given to Burnouf by Mr. Manekji Khurshêdji of Bombay, is a small octavo volume of 125 folios of Indian paper, written twelve to sixteen lines to the page, and contains the Pazand-Sanskrit text of Chaps. I, 5-53, and II, 5-X, 66: the Sanskrit being written upside down, as in AK. The loss of Nêryôsang's Sanskrit introduction and Chap. I, 1-4 of the text indicates that the first folio of AK was already missing when the original of PB3 was copied, and several lacunae in the earlier folios, which have been filled up in red ink from some other source, indicate the torn condition of the earlier folios of AK. The loss of Chaps. I, 54-II, 4 is due to two folios
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