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DECEMBER, 1892.] INSTALMENT OF THE BOWER MANUSCRIPT.
349
THE THIRD INSTALMENT OF THE BOWER MANUSCRIPT. BY PROFESSOR A. F. RUDOLF HOERNLE.
N the present paper I publish that portion of the Bower Manuscript, which contains the
ante, p. on conjuration or use magic spells.
This portion consists of four leaves. In shape they are exactly like those previously published; but they are of a somewhat smaller size, measuring only 9 by 2 inches. There is also an appreciable difference in their material; it is not so brittle as in the other parts of the manuscript, but feels tough and supple. A different preparation of the bark would seem to have been used for these leaves. A specimen, being the obverse of the third leaf, is published in the lower part of Plate III., issued with the Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for November 1891.
The treatise, to which the four leaves belong, is referred to in my paper "On the Date of the Bower Manuscript" (ante, p. 29) as "the third portion C." I have there ascribed the writing of this portion, which is in a large and somewhat slovenly hand, to a scribe distinct from those that wrote the portions published in my first and second instalments. On closer examination, however, and further consideration, I do not feel now quite so sure on this point. It is just possible that the portions published in my second and in the present instalments may be the products of the same scribe, the second portion being written by him in a careful calligraphic hand, but the third in a hurried and rather slovenly manner.
The test letter here is the palatal é, which, both in the second and third portions, has the form of a straight-lined square with a circular loop at the lower left-hand corner, while in the first portion it is a square with a rounded top and a minute forked tail in the place of the loop. In the third portion, in keeping with its more slovenly character, the loop is sometimes lett more or less open, and the top-line of the square more or less indented. In fact this indentation is seen in most letters that have a top-line; it is well shown, e.g., in the akshara grá of samgrámam in the 5th line (fl. IIIa). On the figured page, unfortunately, the palatal é occurs only once, in yasasvinah, in the 4th line (fl. IIIa), where the shows the open loop, but a straight top. This distinction in the shape of the is quite sufficient to show that the writing of the second and third portions belongs to one and the same class, as distinguished from the writing of the first portion. That it belongs not only to the same class but to the same scribe is shown by another significant circumstance connected with the same palatal letter &. Occasionally this letter assumes, in the third portion, a very cursive form, in which the loop is connected with the top-stroke, so that the whole letter can be drawn with no more than two strokes of the pen, thus 6 (e.g., in santayé IIIbe, yasamitrasya IIIb). Now in one or two places in the second instalment a few letters are inserted between the lines of calligraphic writing, to supply blundered omissions. These inserted letters are written net calligraphically, like the rest of the writing, but in a hurried, slovenly hand, strikingly resembling the hand of the third portion. In one of these interpolations, na samsaya in fl. IIIb (ante, p. 139), the letter occurs and is there drawn in precisely the same very current form which is peculiar to the third portion. This fact seems clearly to prove, that, if not the writer, at all events the reviser, of the second portion was identical with the writer of the third portion. Bat there is no reason why the writer of the second portion should have been a different person from its reviser. It is at least equally probable that the same person, who at first wrote his manuscript in a calligraphic hand, afterwards made the corrections in a more hurried and cursive hand, viz., the same in which he wrote another manuscript (i.e., the third portion).
When it is observed that both the second and third portions have this in common, that they never use the transitional or modern forms of y, but exclusively the old tripartite form, it further tends to make probable the identity of the scribes of those two portions. Add to this,
1 Also in the Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. LX., Part I., pp. 80, 81.
