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YOGĀCĀRA WORKS ANNOTATED BY VAIROCANARAKŞITA
(discovered in the Tibetan photographic materials at the K. P. Jayaswal Research Institute at Patna )
By V. V. GOKHALE
In my note on : “ Fragments of Sthiramati's Trimsikāvijñaptibhāşya in the Patna collection of Tibetan manuscript matetials,”1 I examined the contents of four Plates from the photographic collection, made by the late Pandit Rāhulabhadra Sāmkrtyāyana and deposited in the K. P. Jayaswal Research Institute, Patna. Those Plates, showing 36 leaves of Sanskrit mss., were labelled by the photographer as : “N-Darsana, IA, IB, 2A and 2B" (indicating that they were “Darśana”-texts - whatever that may mean-found in the Ngor monastery of Tibet), and they were found to contain fragments of Mahāyānasūtrālamkāra, Cakrasamvaravivști and Trimśikāvijñaptibhāsya of Sthiramati ( in which text certain variants were specially noted ). “ Vimsikā-vi.” (= V-V) in four Plates :
Now, in four other Plates from the said collection, the photographer's labels are found to bear the insinuating title: “Vimśikā-vi.” (= V-V) (which evidently stands for : Vimsatikāvivști') and was taken to be a commentary on the well known Vijñaptimātratāsiddhi - text of Vasubandhu's Vimsatikā, (seemingly corresponding with No. 115 from Bundle XXIV of the Ngor monastery, catalogued on p. 38 of JBORS Vol. XXI, pt. i : “Palm-leaf mss. in Tibet”). These four Plates were kindly placed at my disposal by Prof. S. H. Askari, Hon. Jt. Director of the K. P. Jayaswal Res. Institute, Patna for the preparation of an edition of the V-V, which they were supposed to contain. It was seen, that for taking photos of the original mss. in the Tibetan monastery, two rows of folios, vertically arranged, were placed side by side, in order to take a total of 28 to 32 folios on a quarter-size film, which though enlarged eightfold, made the text - often out of focus - hardly legible even through a good magnifying lens ! Thus, these four Plates covered a total of 121 folios. For identifying the Sanskrit texts contained herein a
1. Published in the Journal of the University of Poona, Humanities Section, No.27 (1968), pp. 175-179.
2. Published for the first time by Sylvain Lévi ( Paris 1925 ), pp. 1-11.
3. Also see title no. 19 among “ Mss. photographed or copied " (BORS Vol. XXIII, pt. i. p. 55.