Manuscript of the Week

We at the NGMCP encounter interesting manuscripts on daily basis.  We plan to use this space to give brief reports on some of our findings.

(Apologies for not updating this place despite being "of the week" (2010-06-24 KH).

2010-06-24: Manuscripts of the Divyāvadānamālā

Unbeknownst to the editors Cowell and Neil, and later Vaidya, there are two very old palm-leaf manuscripts of the so-called Divyāvadānamālā (A 38/14 and 15) preserved in the NAK. One of the feature of the manuscripts is that they do not mention the title of the entire work. Other later manuscripts (never used in an edition, either) start to have the title "Divyāvadānamālā" in their colophon/sub-colophons.

2009-06-03: An old Suśrutasaṃhitā manuscript written by a Buddhist scribe

There is an very old (dated 9th century) manuscript of the Suśrutasaṃhitā.  Since its text appears to offer significant variation from printed editions, it is a very important manuscript. Not only that, it turns out that the scribe was a Buddhist.  He starts the manuscript with “oṃ namaḥ sarvvajñāyānuttaravaidyarājāya.”