The senior manuscripts: another collection of Gandharan Buddhist scrolls.

• Author: Salomon, Richard

1. INTRODUCTION

   In 1994 the British Library acquired a collection of twenty-nine fragments of birch bark scrolls containing various Buddhist texts written in Kharosthi script and Gandhari (Prakrit) language (Salomon 1997). At the time, these were virtually the only known specimens of what must have been a very extensive Gandharan Buddhist literature, with the exception of one other manuscript, namely the famous "Gandhari Dharmapada," which had been discovered in 1892 near Khotan in what is now the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China. In 1996 the British Library/University of Washington Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project was constituted to study and publish this new collection. To date four volumes of studies of the British Library scrolls have been published (Salomon 1999, Salomon 2000, Allon 2001, Lenz 2003), and several further volumes are in progress.

   Since the project was inaugurated in 1996, a large amount of additional related material has come to light. Most of this new material is contained in three major collections. The first of these is the Schoyen collection of Buddhist manuscripts, which includes, in addition to several thousand fragments of Buddhist texts in Sanskrit and Brahmi script, 238 small fragments in Kharosthi script and a sanskritized variety of the Gandhari language (see Salomon 2001), written on palm leaf in folio or pothi format. Study and publication of the Kharosthi portion of the Schoyen collection has been begun by members of the Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project in cooperation with Professor Jens Braarvig of the University of Oslo, who is supervising the publication of the Schoyen collection as a whole (Braarvig 2000; Braarvig 2002; Allon and Salomon 2000; Salomon 2002a). Another collection, smaller but still significant, of Gandhari manuscripts on palm-leaf folios is the eight fragments in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, which were found by the Pelliot expedition in the northern Tarim Basin (Salomon 1998).

   The third additional major collection of Gandhari manuscripts (the fourth in total, including the British Library collection), and the one which is the subject of this article, (1) is the Senior collection, named for its owner, Robert Senior of Butleigh, Glastonbury (U.K.). This collection consists of twenty-four birch bark scrolls or scroll fragments of widely varying size, format, and quality of preservation. Like the British Library scrolls, the Senior scrolls were found inside an inscribed clay pot (described below in part 2) whose original provenance is not known with any certainty, but which is believed to have come from one of the several stupa sites in and around Hadda, near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. After being unrolled and conserved by the staff of the British Library's India Office and Oriental Collections, the scrolls were found to contain varying amounts of textual material in Kharosthi script and Gandhari language (except for one scroll, no. 6, which proved to be blank). Several of the Senior scrolls, such as nos. 5, 19, and 20, are complete or nearly complete, in contrast to the British Library scrolls, all of which were more or less fragmentary.

   The owner of the collection has generously agreed to put it at the disposal of the Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project for study and publication, and this work is now in progress. Following this article, which is intended to introduce the Senior collection as a whole, the project staff plans to begin publishing texts from the collection in the Gandharan Buddhist Texts series as soon as possible. The first volume on the Senior manuscripts will contain a detailed overview and catalogue of the collection as a whole (analogous to Salomon 1999 for the British Library collection), plus sample editions of one or more of the texts contained therein.

2. THE INSCRIPTIONS ON THE POT AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR DATING OF THE MANUSCRIPTS

   Like the British Library scrolls, the Senior scrolls were found in a clay jar with a Kharosthi inscription. The inscription on the pot that contained the British Library scrolls (British Library pot D; Salomon 1999: 151-54, 214-17) was of great importance for establishing a likely sectarian affiliation of the manuscripts (ibid., pp. 166-78), since it refers to a gift to members of the Dharmaguptaka school (dhamauteana parigrahami), but it was undated. The inscription on the Senior pot, conversely, contains no sectarian reference (see also part 6 below), but is dated in the year twelve of an era which is unspecified but which, as explained below, can safely be identified as the Kaniska era. The inscription thereby provides an important clue to the dating of the accompanying manuscripts.

   The Senior pot actually consists of two parts. The pot proper (fig. 1) is a large spherical vessel measuring about 35 cm in height and 30 cm in diameter, generally similar in form to the five inscribed pots in the British Library (Salomon 1999: 183-224), including the one (D) that contained the British Library scrolls. The second part is a smaller, cup-shaped lid (fig. 2), 13.8 cm high, which fits over the mouth of the jar. Both parts are inscribed with essentially the same text, but the version on the lid is abbreviated at various points. The black ink in which the inscriptions are written is badly faded, at some points illegible or even almost invisible to the naked eye. The reading of the inscription was facilitated by the use of an alcohol spray, which briefly enhances the visibility of the ink without damaging it, but even so many of the letters remain uncertain or illegible. The readings (2) and interpretations that follow are at this point still provisional; a more detailed study of them will be presented in the projected survey volume on the Senior collection referred to above.

   [FIGURES 1-2 OMITTED]

   Inscription 1, on the pot: 1.[sa]ba[tsa]ra [ba](*da)[sa](*mi) ma[se] a[vadu]nake sa[ste]hi (*paca)hi i[sa] (*ksuna)mi [prati]tha[vi]? [matrapi]tra-p[uya]e sarva[satva]na [p]u(*ya)[e] 2. r(*o)hanasa masumatraputrasa In the year [twelve], in the month Avadunaka, after (*five) days; at this time [this] was established in honor of [his] father and mother, in honor of all beings; [donation] of Rohana, son of Masumatra. Inscription 2, on the lid: [sa]batsara 10 [2] mas[u] a[vadu] saste 4 1 ? ? ? ? ? rohanena masumatraputrena (3) thu[ba]m[i] sava[satvana pu](*ya) Year 12, month Avadu[naka], after 5 days, (*established?) by Rohana, son of Masumatra, in the stupa, in honor of all beings. Although the date is only partially legible in each of the two inscriptions, it can be completely reconstructed by combining the legible portions of each. The year date is given in inscription 2 in figures (presumably in order to save space on the smaller surface on which it is written) as 10-2, that is, the year 12 of an unspecified era ([sa]batsara). This enables us to reconstruct the partially legible year number written in words in inscription 1 as ba(*da)sa(*mi), "twelve," confirming the date. The month name, abbreviated in inscription 2 as a[vadu], is spelled out in full in inscription 1 as a[vadu]nake, that is, the Macedonian month Audunaios ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). The day number given in words in inscription 1 is illegible except for the instrumental/locative plural ending -hi, but the corresponding numerical figures in inscription 2 are legible as 4-1, that is, 5, so that the illegible word in 1 can be reconstructed as (*paca)hi.

   Thus the pot was dedicated on the fifth day of Avadunaka/Audunaios in the twelfth year of an unspecified era. This era can be identified as that of Kaniska on the basis of the dating formula, which is typical of Kaniska-era dates. The expressions sastehi "day[s]" and isa ksunami (4) "at this time" or "on this date," which are of Iranian rather than Indic origin, (5) are typically found in the dates of Kharosthi inscriptions attributable to the Kaniska era. In the Wardak inscription, for example, dated to the [Kaniska] year 51 during the reign of Huviska, the month date reads masye arthamisiya sastehi 10 4 1 "in the month Arthamisiya [Artemisios], after fifteen days" (Konow 1929: 170).

   Several other inscriptions contain dates attributable to the Kaniska era which are very similar in phrasing and format to the date on the Senior pot. Particularly relevant is the "Hidda inscription of the year 28" (Konow 1929: 157-58; Konow 1935), which, like the Senior pot, was also written on a clay jar (now lost), and which was found at "Hidda" (i.e., Hadda), reportedly also the findspot of the Senior pot. Its date reads sambatsarae athavisatihi 20 4 4 mase apelae sastehi dasahi 10 isa ksunammi "in the year twenty-eight, 28, in the month Apelaa [Apellaios], after ten days, 10; at this time ..." Another similar dating formula appears in the "Box-lid inscription of the year 18" (Konow 1929: 151-52), which is written on the lid of a brass casket, also now lost. Its provenance is unknown, but it may well have also been found at Hadda or a nearby site, since, like the "Hidda" inscription, it was found by Charles Masson who explored this area in the 1830s. Its date is read by Konow as sam 10 4 4 masye arthamisiya sastehi 10 is[e] ksunamm(r)i "Year 18, in the month Arthamisiya [Artemisios], after 10 days; at this time ..."

   The use of Macedonian, as opposed to Indian, month names is also characteristic of dates from the Kaniska era, as in the examples cited above, (6) although Macedonian months do also sometimes occur in earlier inscriptions such as the Taxila copper plate of Patika (Konow 1929: 28), dated in the month Panema = Panemos. All in all, there can be little if any doubt that the year twelve of the inscriptions on the pot which contained the Senior scrolls refers to the Kaniska era. This means that the pot was dedicated either around A.D. 90, if one subscribes to the theory that the Kaniska era is identical to the Saka era of A.D. 77/78, or at some time in the first half of...