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BUDDHIST INDIA
used, of which the Takshila copper plates and one of the Maung-gon gold plates are here shown.
On the other hand we have abundant evidence, both literary and archæological, of the use for such purposes of birch bark and palm leaves. The oldest specimen of a book in such writing hitherto discovered is the MS. found in the ruins of the Gosinga Vihāra, thirteen iniles from Khotan. This MS. is written with ink on birch bark in letters of the Kharoșthi alphabet, an alphabet introduced overland into the extreme north-west of India about 500 B.C., and used locally in Gandhāra (side by side with the other alphabet to which reference has been made above, and to which all existing Indian alphabets can be traced back). This MS., portions of which have just found their way both to Paris and St. Petersburg, must have been written in Gandhāra shortly before or after the Christian era. And it contains an anthology of Buddhist religious verses taken from the canonical books, but given in a local dialect, younger than the Pāli of the texts. (Fig. 26.)
The next MS. in point of age is much younger. It is the one discovered by Captain Bower in Mingai, near Kuchar, containing medical receipts and formulas for snake-charming, and written in characters of the fourth or perhaps the fifth century A.D., with
* On the name of this alphabet see now the discussion between Sylvain Lévi in the Bulletin de l'Ecole Français d'extrême-orient for 1902, and Pischel and Franke in the Proceedings of the Berlin Academy for 1903.
? See Senart in the Journal Asiatique for 1898; and compare Rb. D.'s note in the J.R.A.S. for 1899.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
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