________________
128
BUDDHIST INDIA
age have been recently discovered in Turkestan; but these are the oldest ones so far deciphered and edited. The others are still awaiting decipherment, and are in the hands of Dr. Hoernle for that purpose.
Now as the Bower MS. is in Sanskrit (though not good Sanskrit), and the Gosinga MS, is in a dialect allied to, but younger than Pāli, the natural conclusion would seem to be that, as Sanskrit is older than Pāli, the texts contained in the Bower MS. must be older. That the MS. itself, the particular copy that has survived, is some centuries later, does not matter. Pāli is to Sanskrit about as Italian is to Latin. Whatever the age of the MSS. in which the copies of them may be written, the text of a work by Vergil must be older than the text of a work by Dante. The conclusion seems, therefore, obvious that a work in Sanskrit, whatever the age of the MS. in which it is written, must be older than a work in Pāli, and, a fortiori, older than a work in a dialect that is, philologically speaking, younger than Pali.
Oddly enough the exact contrary is the case. Not only is the Gosinga MS. older than the Bower MS., but the verses contained in it are also older than the texts contained in the Bower MS., and that precisсly because they are written in a dialect closely allied to Pāli. And we should know this for certain even if we had only printed copies of these two works, that is, even if we had not the palæographic evidence of the age of the handwriting to guide us. For, in the period we are considering, the more closely a book or an inscription approxiirates to
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
