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The Khotan Dharmapada

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Extract

The famous manuscript in Kharoṣṭhī script which contains an anthology of Buddhist verses similar to the Sanskrit Udānavarga and the Pali Dhammapada became known first in 1892, when portions came into the hands of MM. Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard in Khotan. They were told that the MS. had been found in the ruins of the Vihāra at the Gośṛnga hill (on this site see M. A. Stein, Ancient Khotan, pp. 185 ff.). Other portions were acquired by the Russian Consul-General in Kashghar, M. N. Th. Petrovskii, and were sent by him to M. S. F. Oldenburg in St. Petersburg in February, 1897. In the same year, 1897, M. Oldenburg prepared a photograph and transcription of one folio of the St. Petersburg collection, which was published and presented by the Oriental Faculty of the University of St. Petersburg to the Eleventh International Congress of Orientalists held in Paris in 1897 (Predvaritel'naja zametka o buddijskoj rukopisi, napisannoj pismenami Kharoṣṭhī, St. Petersburg). Meantime, also in 1897, the portions of the MS. which had been brought to Paris were placed in the hands of M. Émile Senart, who published his reading and interpretation of the MS., with five facsimiles, in the Journal Asiatique (1898, ii, pp. 193–308). He used in addition to the text published in facsimile a large number of small fragments, and was also able to add the readings of that part of the St. Petersburg manuscript which contained half-lines fitting into his fragment B. M. Senart remarked that the portion of the MS. in St. Petersburg was more extensive and better preserved than the portion in Paris.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1945

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References

page 489 note 1 Note, for the present, ks as in ksema for the sign of which the phonetic value was probably ṭṣ (or retroflex ch). Note also mm in bramma, sammaṣado,(as M. Senart had read) rather than the mhof E. Leumann and Sten Konow. Medical alif is indicated by'. Italics mark restorations of broken or lost letters; brackets < > show additions of the editor.

page 489 note 2 kha written above kṣu

page 497 note 1 brammaṇa di vucadi is written at the end of 1.3 preceded by a mark.

page 498 note 1 artha dharma ca deśedi deleted.