Sanskrit Fragments Of Kasyapaparivarta

Author(s): J W De Jong
Publisher: J W De Jong

Page 1

SANSKRIT FRAGMENTS OF THE KĀSYAPAPARIVARTA
by J. W. DE JONG, Canberra
In 1938 Kuno Höryū edited two fragments of a manuscript of the Kāśyapaparivarta'. They had been sent to Hoernle by P. J. Miles in 1903. According to Hoernle the fragments had been found in Khadalik. The two fragments (Hoernle No. 143 S.B. 38 and No. 143 S.B. 39) are at present in the India Office Library to which institution I am obliged for having put at my disposal excellent photocopies. Kuno had no difficulty in showing that they belong to one and the same leaf. The text corresponds to sections 128-136 of the edition of the Kāśyapaparivarta published by A. von StaëlHolstein (Shanghai, 1926). In von Staël-Holstein's edition each of the sections 128–133 consists of a prose part and a verse part, but in the fragments the verses are missing. However, the fragments do contain the first words of section 136: atha khalu bhagavām tasyä[m] velā(y)[ām imām gāthām abhāşata). Kuno pointed out that of the four Chinese versions the two versions dating from the periods of the Chin and Ch'in dynasties, correspond more closely to the Sanskrit text of the fragments. He concluded that this text must have been in existence in the 3rd-5th centuries A.D. Comparing the fragments with the corresponding prose parts in von Staël-Holstein's edition, Kuno tried to reconstruct the missing parts of the entire leaf. His readings of the manuscript are not always correct and his reconstruction does not take into account the exact extent of the missing portions. Even more important is the fact that Kuno was not aware of the fact that a fragment of the same leaf was edited twenty years before by J. N. Reutero. The fragments, published by Reuter, were brought back from his expedition to Central Asia and North China in 1906–1908 by Colonel Baron Gustav Mannerheim. The third fragment contains a passage of the Kāśyapaparivarta corresponding to sections 130-135. It exactly fills one gap in the leaf, edited by Kuno, between lines 3 to 8 of the recto and lines i to 6 of the verso. The following edition of the three fragments of this leaf is based upon a photocopy of the two fragments in the India Office Library and a photocopy of the Manner
1 Saiiki shutsudo bukkyō bonpon to sono seiten shiron-jo chii (jo). Daihoshakkyo to Zoagonkyō no genten, I. Uten shutsudo Daihöshakkyo bonpon to sono kachi',
Bukkyo kenkyū, II,3 (1938), pp. 71-110. 2 J. N. REUTER, 'Some Buddhist Fragments from Chinese Turkestan in Sanskrit and
"Khotanese", Journal de la société finno-ougrienne, 30 (1913-1918), pp. 1-37 (Reprinted in: C. G. Mannerheim, Across Asia from West to East in 1906-1908, vol. II, Helsinki, 1940).