________________
DE JONG
Hinüber edited folios 45–74 of another Gilgit manuscript (K) of the Saddharmapundarīka.35 In his introduction he showed that the Gilgit manuscripts of the Saddharmapundarīka can be divided into two families, one comprising the manuscripts of group A, the other the manuscripts B, C and K. The relations of these two recensions with the Central Asian materials on the one hand and with the Nepalese manuscripts on the other prove to be much more complicated than scholars had thought in the past.
Although, as in my previous lectures, it is my intention to limit this survey to work done by scholars in Europe and America, it was necessary to mention here the facsimiles published by Lokesh Chandra and Watanabe. It is also absolutely indispensable to mention at least the publication by the Institute for the Comprehensive Study of the Lotus Sutra (Rissho University) of facsimiles of more than thirty manuscripts of the Saddharmapuņdarīka from Nepal, Gilgit and Central Asia in fifteen volumes of which twelve have been published since 1977. It has now become possible to make an exhaustive study of the different recensions of the Saddharmapundarīka and to analyse in detail the grammatical and lexicographical characteristics of each recension. When writing his Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Dictionary and Grammar, Franklin Edgerton had only very unreliable text editions of the Saddharmapundarīka at his disposal. It will be one of the main tasks of Buddhist philology to eventually replace Edgerton's monumental work with one which is based upon reliable editions of texts, but it will be a long time before it will be possible to think of such an undertaking. At present the most important work to be undertaken is the editing of all texts published in facsimiles and the study of different recensions and their grammatical and lexicographical characteristics. What we need are grammars of single texts and not only that but grammars of one single recension of a text on the model of the grammar of the Sanskrit Recension A of the Prajñā-pāramitā-ratna-guņa-samcayagāthā, published by A. Yuyama in 1973.36 The same applies to lexicographical studies. Only when a sufficient number of grammars and
35 A New Fragmentary Gilgit Manuscript of the Saddharmapundarikasūtra. Tokyo, 1982.
36 A Grammar of the Prajñā-pāramitā-ratna-guna-samcaya-gāthā (Sanskrit Recension A). Canberra 1973. A. Yuyama (ed.), Prajñā-pāramitā-ratna-guna-samcaya-gātha (Sanskrit Recension A). Cambridge, 1976. Cf. G. Schopen's review, IIJ 20 (1978), pp. 110–124.
84
