Indian Antiquary Vol 21

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 35

FEBRUARY, 1892.)
DATE OF THE BOWER MANUSCRIPT.
A NOTE ON THE DATE OF THE BOWER MANUSCRIPT.
BY A. F. RUDOLF HOERNLE, PH.D. [Reprinted with alterations and additions from the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,
Vol. LX, Part I, No. 2, 1891.) THE Bower manuscript was exhibited to the Asiatic Society of Bengal at the two meetings
1 in November, 1890 and April, 1891. I call it the “Bower MS." in order that Lieutenant Bower, to whose enterprise the learned world owes the preservation of the manuscript, may receive the honour due to him. Some account of the locality and circumstances of its finding will be found in the Society's Proceedings for November, 1890; and a preliminary account of the manuscript and its contents was published by me in the Proceedings for April, 1891. Since then I have spent a long summer vacation in carefully examining the whole manuscript, and, with the exception of a few leaves, I have read and transcribed the whole. I have now, moreover, the pleasure of announcing that the Governments of India and Bengal, with their usual liberality in such matters, have decided to publish & complete edition of the manuscript which I am now preparing.
This paper had been written in Darjiling, in May), when I received (in July), through the kindness of Professor Bühler in Vienna, an advance copy of his notice of the specimen pages of the Bower MS., which were published in the November Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. It was particularly gratifying to me to find that, reading the manuscript, he in Vienna and I in Calcutta, at about the same point of time, we independently arrived at essentially the same conclusions, both with regard to the age and the contents of the manuscript. Such a coincidence most distinctly makes for the truth of our conclusions.
The substance of the paper which I now publish on the age of the Bower MS., and which I promised in the April Proceedings, was originally intended by me to form a part of the introduction to my edition of the manuscript. But seeing the interest which the manuscript has already excited in Europe, I pablish it now in anticipation, and hope similarly to publish portions of the manuscript, with translations, from time to time,
I may state here briefly the results of my detailed examination of the manuscript. It consists of not less than five distinct portions.
The first portion consists of 31 leaves. It contains the medical work of which I have published the commencement in the April Proceedings, and two pages of which are figured in the upper parts of the two plates accompanying the November and April Proceedings. I shall designate it by the letter A.
The second portion, to be called B, which immediately follows the first portion, consists of five leaves, and forms a sort of collection of proverbial sayings. A specimen of it is figured in the lower part (No. II) of the plate in the April Proceedings.
The third portion, C, consisting of four leaves, contains the story of how a charm against snake bite was given by Buddha to Ananda while he was staying in Jêtavana, tlie garden of Anathapiņda. A specimen of this portion is figured in the lower part of the plate in the November Proceedings.
The fonrth portion, D, consists of six leaves. It is preserved in a rather unsatisfactory condition, and appears to contain a similar collection of proverbial sayings as the second portion, B.
The fifth portion, E, which also consists of five leaves, contains another medical treatise. It appears to be — so far as I can judge at present the commencement of a larger work.
1 It is now published in the Vienna Oriental Journal, Vol. V, p. 103.
* The first instalment is published in No. III. of the Journal, 18. Soc. Beng., for 1891. It is the fifth portion (E) of the MS.