Gilgit Manuscripts Vol 01

Author(s): Nalinaksha Dutt, D M Bhattacharya, Shivnath Sharma
Publisher: Government of Jammu

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cided not to publish them, and furnished me with the necessary facilities and letters of introduction to the authorities of the Kashmir State for examining the mss. Rai Bahadur R. P. Chanda also helped me by introducing me to Mr. Kak. I take this opportunity to express to them my heartfelt thanks for their kind help in various ways. I must also thank my friends Prof. D. M. Bhattacharya, Pandit Shivnath Sastri and Pandit Ramdhone Bhattacharya for their kind and unstinted co-operation in the preparation of the present volume.
The texts published here are only a small fraction of the whole collection. For editing the remaining mss., I have secured the co-operation of my distinguished colleagues Prof. B. M. Barua, Prof. Vidhusekhara Sastri, Dr. P. C. Bagchi, Prof. D. M. Bhattacharya and my student Mr. A. C. Banerji. In the present volume the Ajitasenavyākarana-sūtra has been edited by Prof. D. M. Bhattacharya, and the Srimahādevivyākarana-sūtra by Mr. A. C. Banerji.
The mss. were written in the 5th or 6th century A. C. and as such they are some of the earliest so far discovered in India, similar to the Bower ms. and to those discovered in Central Asia and Eastern Turkestan. Most of the mss. were known to us only through their Chinese and Tibetan translations and no one dreamt of the discovery of their Sanskrit originals. It is a peculiar fate of the Buddhist works that not a single ms. could be discovered in India except that of the Mañjuśrīmülakalpa (since published in Trivandrum Sanskrit Series). The mss. have come so far either from Ceylon, Nepal, or Tibet and their translations from Burma, Ceylon, China, Japan, Tibet and Mongolia, so we may say that the present mss. are the only Buddhist mss. discovered in India.
The language of the mss. is similar to that of the Mahāvastu, Lalitavistara, Saddharmapundarika, or Suvarṇaprabhāsa. The