A fragment of the 'Pancavimsatisahasrika Prajnaparamita-sutra' from eastern Turkestan.

• Author: Bongard-Levin, G.M.

INTRODUCTION

In the Central Asian Collection of the Manuscript Archive (St. Petersburg Branch, Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences)(1) there are many fragments belonging to the Prajnaparamita literature.(2)

During the author's stay in Japan (March, 1991) Dr. Takayasu Kimura and Mr. Shogo Watanabe managed to identify some of the fragments as belonging to the Pancavimsatisahasrika Prajnaparamita-sutra.

This Sanskrit sutra is one of the main Prajnaparamita texts. It has been preserved mainly in late manuscripts(3) although Central Asian fragments of this sutra are also known.(4) The publication of the Central Asian Sanskrit fragments of this sutra is very important for the reconstruction of the oldest version of the text.(5) It is necessary to compare the Sanskrit text with Tibetan and Chinese translations.(6)

The fragment under publication was identified by Shogo Watanabe as a pan of the sixth chapter of the Pancavimsatisahasrika Prajnaparamita-sutra.(7)

This fragment belongs to the N. F. Petrovsky collection; together with many other texts it was sent to S. F. Oldenburg by N. F. Petrovsky, the Russian consul in Kashgar.

The fragment is kept in the N. F. Petrovsky collection under the number SI P/19(1). 1 folio (recto and verso), 32.5 cm x 24 cm; 17 lines on each side are preserved, upright Gupta Brahmi.(8) The text is written in Indian ink light brown paper; there is a hole for binding; some parts of the text are badly damaged. The pagination number (219) is preserved on the left side. The language is Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit with influence of Middle Indic.(9) Among the orthographic peculiarities should be mentioned the doubling of consonants and, at the same time, the shortening of consonants. (In the transliteration I give the forms as they are in the text of the manuscript, with the explanations of irregularities in the footnotes.)

The textual comparison of this fragment with the version known from late Sanskrit manuscripts (see the publication of the sixth chapter of the Pancavimsatisahasrika Prajnaparamita by Shogo Watanabe) shows many differences and allows one to see later alterations, which are very important for the general study of Buddhist Sanskrit texts in Eastern Turkestan.(10)

1 See G. M. Bongard-Levin, M. I. Vorobyeva-Desyatovskaya, Indian Texts from Central Asia (Leningrad Manuscript Collection), Bibliographia Philologica Buddhica, series minor V (Tokyo, 1986).

2 See G. M. Bongard-Levin, M. I...