A preliminary survey of some early Buddhist manuscripts recently

·期刊原文
A preliminary survey of some early Buddhist manuscripts recently
acquired by the British Library
Richard Salomon
The Journal of the American Oriental Society
Vol.117 No.2 (April-June 1997)
pp.353-358
COPYRIGHT 1997 American Oriental Society

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1. Introduction; general description of the manuscripts
The Oriental and India Office Collections of the British Library
have recently acquired, with the assistance of an anonymous
benefactor, a substantial collection of early Buddhist texts written
on birch-bark scrolls in the Gandhari or Northwestern Prakrit
language and the Kharosthi script. The original provenance of the
manuscripts is not known, but may be Afghanistan, in view of certain
resemblances (discussed below) to other materials previously found
there.

The manuscripts comprise thirteen rolls of birch bark which had been
removed from their original container. According to verbal reports,
they were originally found inside one of a group of five large clay
pots, each bearing a Kharosthi dedicatory inscription, which have
also been acquired by the Library. The bark rolls are extremely
fragile and, in fact, had already been seriously damaged, in that
substantial portions of one vertical edge of most of the manuscripts
had been destroyed. When acquired by the Library, the scrolls were
still in their original rolled-up state, and the exceedingly
delicate task of unrolling them was successfully carried out by the
conservation staff of the British Library. This has now made it
possible to prepare preliminary photographs of the manuscripts, an
example which is shown in figure 1, and to conduct a provisional
survey of their contents.

The scrolls proved to consist of birch-bark strips, typically about
five to nine inches in width, on which the texts were written in
black ink. The long scrolls were built up out of shorter strips,
apparently around twelve to eighteen inches long, which were
overlapped and glued together, as shown by blank spaces in several
fragments in which the original strips have separated. The scrolls
were reinforced by a thread sewn along both margins. In a few cases
traces of the original thread are preserved, and in many places the
needle holes along the margins are still visible.

Typically, the scribes began writing at the top of the recto,
continued to the bottom of the recto, and then reversed the scroll
both from top to bottom and from front to back and continued writing
from the bottom edge of the verso back to the top of the scroll.
This means that the texts both began and ended at the top of the
scroll, which would be on the outside when it was rolled up from the
bottom. But this is precisely the part of the scroll that is most
subject to wear and tear, especially in the case of a fragile
material like birch bark, which becomes extremely brittle when it
dries out. The unfortunate result is that, but for one fragmentary
exception, we do not have the beginning or end of any scroll, or the
label or colophon that might have accompanied it. Virtually all the
surviving material, in other words, is from the middle and bottom of
the original scrolls. This situation is apparently not due to damage
inflicted since they were recently rediscovered, but probably
reflects their already imperfect condition when they were interred
in antiquity (as discussed in part 2). The surviving sections of the
scrolls range in length from mere fragments of a few lines or even a
few letters to substantial, though still incomplete, portions of
complete scrolls. The longest intact section of a single scroll is
about eighty-four inches long.

For all these reasons, the condition of the manuscripts is only fair
at best, and often much worse than that. All are incomplete, and
many are mere fragments. Moreover, in most cases the delicate
surface of the bark is peeled, faded, discolored, or otherwise
damaged, so that it can be difficult or, not infrequently, nearly
impossible to decipher the texts. Even where the texts are more or
less legible, they contain, almost without exception, frequent and
sizable lacunae.

2. Constitution, disposition, and affiliation of the manuscripts
It has already become clear in the course of the preliminary
cataloguing of the manuscripts that the original thirteen rolls do
not all constitute single texts or scrolls. Although some of them do
contain the remnants of a single scroll, several proved to contain
fragments, of widely varying size, of two, three, or even more
originally separate scrolls. In several cases it was also noticed
that separate fragments of the same text, and presumably of the same
original scroll, were found in two or more of the thirteen rolls.
And in at least one case, a scroll was broken in half lengthwise and
the two long narrow halves of the text were placed in different
rolls. This lengthwise splitting of the original scroll probably
resulted from its having been bound by a string or ribbon and left
untouched for a long period in antiquity, with the result that, as
the bark became dry and brittle, the binding cord cut through and
divided it in half.

These peculiarities of the condition and disposition of the texts
all point to the conclusion that these manuscripts were already in
fragmentary or damaged condition in antiquity, before they were
interred in the clay jar in which they were reportedly discovered.
This implies that they were discarded worn-out texts, an impression
which is confirmed by the observation that five of them have
secondary interlinear notations, in hands clearly different from
those of the original scribes, reading likhidago, "[it has been]
written," likhidago sarva "[it has] all [been] written," and the
like (see fig. 2). These interlineations seem to be notations by
later copyists who had rewritten the texts onto new manuscripts and
marked the old ones as "copied," i.e., as ready to be discarded.
Such discards were then rolled up together, apparently more or less
at random, placed inside clay pots, and buried, perhaps in a small
stupa within the precincts of the monastery to which they belonged.
Such a practice is attested by earlier discoveries, such as those at
Hadda, in eastern Afghanistan, where Barthoux (1933: 60) found
similar clay pots containing, in some cases, fragmentary remains of
birch-bark manuscripts, and in others, pieces of human bone. It thus
appears that the relics of venerable monks and of Buddhist texts
were conceived and treated similarly as sacred objects deserving of
ritual interment.

What we have in this new collection, in other words, is, in all
likelihood, something roughly analogous to the genizah of Jewish
tradition, that is, a collection of discarded documents for which
religious law or custom required a ritual interment. The source of
these discarded texts was no doubt the library, or perhaps rather
the scriptorium, of a Gandharan Buddhist monastery, probably an
establishment of the Dharmaguptaka sect. This affiliation is
indicated by the inscription on the jar in which the scrolls were
reportedly found, which records its dedication to members of that
sect (dhamauteana parigrahami, "in the possession of the
Dharmaguptakas"). Although this sect has hitherto been only very
sparsely attested in the northwest, this and several other recent
discoveries, including several that have not yet been published, of
Kharosthi inscriptions recording donations to the Dharmaguptakas
indicate that they were a major sect in that region, particularly in
Afghanistan.

All in all, the preliminary survey revealed that the thirteen
original rolls of manuscript material contained thirty-two separate
"fragments," a fragment being here defined as a piece, of any size,
of an originally separate scroll. However, it was further
determined, by connecting separated fragments on the grounds of
similar handwritings and contents, that these thirty-two "fragments"
actually stemmed from about twenty-two different original scrolls.
The number of separate texts, however, is larger, probably about
twenty-six, because some scrolls contain two, and possibly even more
than two, separate and apparently unrelated texts. In many such
cases, it appears that the first scribe used only the recto, which
was apparently the preferred writing surface, and ended at or near
the bottom. Another scribe, perhaps at a later date seems to have
used the empty surface at the bottom of the recto and the completely
blank verso to record another text.

These figures, at this point, are only provisional, and will
almost certainly have to be adjusted as a result of the more
detailed studies of the manuscripts, but they are sufficiently
secure to give a general idea of the extent of the collection.
Although this is presumably only a small fraction of the total
amount of literature in the monastery's library, it should prove to
be enough to give at least a partial view of the contents of such a
library.

3. Identification and classification of the texts
Identification and classification of the texts is still for the most
part at a preliminary stage, and only a few of them have been
positively identified with parallel texts in Pali, Sanskrit,
Chinese, or Tibetan. But the major genres of Buddhist canonical and
paracanonical literature represented by this collection have become
clear, at least in general outline. Most of the texts which are
sufficiently legible to be analyzed in the preliminary survey seem
to fall into the following categories:

1. Didactic or popular poetry, such as a Gandhari version of the
"Rhinoceros' Horn Sutra," a well-known poem otherwise preserved in
Pali as the Khagga-visana-sutta of the Sutta-nipata, and in Sanskrit
incorporated into the Mahavastu (ed. E. Senart, 1.307-9).
2. Avadana texts describing the past lives and karmic background of
various Buddhist personages, for example, a collection of stories
describing the previous incarnations (provayoge = Sanskrit
purvayogah) of Ajnata-kaundinya, Ananda, and the Buddha himself.
3. Canonical sutra texts and commentaries thereon, for instance, a
Gandhari version of the Sangiti-sutra (also extant in Pali,
Sanskrit, and Chinese) with an unidentified commentary.
4. Abhidharma texts, as yet unidentified.
5. Stotra text (only one fragment).
It may seem surprising that no Vinaya material at all has been found
in this substantial body of manuscripts. BUt a similar lacuna has
been noted among the oldest of the Central Asian Sanskrit
manuscripts, and Sander (1991: 141-42) has plausibly hypothesized
that the Vinaya texts were preserved by oral recitation and not
normally set down in writing in early times. It is possible, of
course, that the absence of Vinaya texts among these new manuscripts
is merely coincidental, "the luck of the draw," as it were, but I
think it more likely that there were few if any Vinaya manuscripts
in our hypothetical complete monastic library, for reasons similar
to those adduced by Sander.

4. Date of the manuscripts
Certain considerations point to a possible date for the manuscripts
as early as the first half of the first century A.D. The first of
these is a clear reference, though in an uncertain context in a
fragmentary text, to jihonige mahaksatra . . . (see fig. 3). Here a
reconstruction such as mahaksatra(pe*) 'great satrap' is obvious,
and there can be little doubt that the reference is to the
Indo-Scythian satrap Jihonika, who is known from his coins and from
the Taxila silver-vase inscription (Konow 1929:81-82), and who is
likely to have ruled around the fourth decade of the first century
A.D. (MacDowall 1973: 229). Of course, this reference to a
contemporary historical figure, which is a (pleasant) surprise
though not completely without parallel in Buddhist tradition, only
establishes that the text in question was originally composed during
or after the reign of Jihonika, but not necessarily that our actual
manuscript was written in or around his time.

But the dedicatory inscription on one of the clay pots associated
with the manuscripts (though not, apparently, the one in which they
were found) also points to a date in the early first century A.D.
This inscription records its donation by a woman named Vasavadatta,
the wife of Susoma or Suhasoma (. . . deyadharme vasavadatae
susomabharyae. . . . svamiasa suhasomasa sammepratyasae . . .
bhavatu, ". . . the pious gift of Vasavadatta, wife of Susoma . . .
. May it be for the principal share [of merit] for [her] husband
Suhasoma"). Both of these names match with ones known from other
inscriptions datable to the early first century. Vasavadatta is
given as the name of the sister of the Apraca prince Indravarman in
his reliquary inscription of the Azes year 63 =6 A.D. (Salomon and
Schopen 1984: 108-9). Suhasoma appears as the name of a royal
kinsman (anakaena) and official (asmanakarena) of King Senavarman of
Odi in his gold-leaf inscription (Salomon 1986: 265), which is
undated but attributable from its reference to the Kusana overlord
Kujula Kadphises to the first half of the first century. Of these
two names, the second in particular, Suhasoma, is an unusual one and
therefore very likely to refer to the same person in the two
inscriptions where it occurs.

Unfortunately, the chronological significance of this inscription on
jar A is vitiated by the lack of any reliable evidence as to the
archaeological relationship of that jar with the jar (D) in which
the scrolls were found. While there is reason to believe that both
may have come from the same site, and hence may be more or less
contemporary, there is no way to establish this. Other criteria,
such as paleographic and linguistic features, indicate a dating
range for the manuscripts from the beginning of the first century to
the first half of the second century A.D. Thus, although it cannot
be proven at this point, there is some reason to think that they
date from the earlier part of the range, i.e., from the first half
of the first century A.D. The possibility of such a date for this
group of relics has been confirmed, or at least not contradicted, by
thermoluminescence testing of the clay pots, which indicated a
dating range from the first to the eighth centuries A.D., with a 10%
margin of variation and no weighting implications for any period
within this broad span.

5. Relationships to previous discoveries
Though unprecedented, the discovery of a large corpus of Buddhist
texts written on birch-bark scrolls in the Gandhari language and
Kharosthi script is not entirely unexpected. Only one more-or-less
intact manuscript of this type has previously come to light, namely
the "Gandhari Dharmapada," definitively published in Brough 1962,
which was discovered in 1892 near Khotan (now in Xinjiang Autonomous
Region, China). The new manuscripts are broadly similar in form,
age, and contents to the Gandhara Dharmapada, though there are some
significant differences in the details of such features as language,
orthography, and arrangement of the text.

But besides the well-known case of the Gandhari Dharmapada, there
have apparently been several other examples of similar materials
found in Afghanistan and Pakistan, though none of these has ever
been properly published; therefore, they have gone almost entirely
unnoticed in scholarship on the relevant fields. Thus, the early
archaeological explorer of the northwest, Charles Masson (in Wilson
1841: 59-60), reported that some of the Buddhist reliquaries which
he found in eastern Afghanistan were "accompanied by twists of
tuz-leaves, inscribed internally with characters"; Wilson, in an
editor's note (p. 60, n. 1), explained that "it seems likely that
what Mr. Masson denominates 'tuz-leaves' is the inner bark of the
Bhurj or birch tree, which was very commonly used for writing upon."
Barthoux, in his excavations at Hadda (1933:60-61), discovered
numerous Kharosthi texts on birch bark, including some contained in
clay pots like the newly discovered manuscripts. The fate of these
manuscripts is described in his own words: "ces fragments, tres
fragiles, etaient deja broyes par les decombres, et en les retirant,
malgre toutes les precautions prises, l'on achevait de les detruire"
(p. 61), and this explains why these, and probably the other similar
discoveries as well, were never properly published.

6. Implications for the study of Buddhist literature and canons
Mainly on the basis of the evidence of the Gandhari Dharmapada, and
secondarily on the grounds of inscriptional testimony of what seem
to be Gandhari versions of Buddhist texts (Brough 1962: 42) and of
evidence from the Chinese Buddhist tradition, it has been proposed
that there may have existed a Buddhist canon in Gandhari, of which,
until now, only a few fragments have survived. Thus Brough
concluded, with due caution, that "the existence of this [Gandhari]
Dharmapada does imply the existence of a canon of which it formed a
part" (p. 43). The new discovery thus confirms what already seemed
likely, namely that the Gandharan Buddhists in the early centuries
of the Christian era did have a substantial corpus of written
scriptures in the Gandhari language, comprising a considerable
variety of genres ranging from didactic poetry to scholastic
Abhidharma.

As to the contents, arrangement, and affiliations of this canon, it
would be premature to make anything more than some very partial and
provisional observations. Broadly speaking, it appears to represent
early northern Indian Buddhist teaching and practice; nothing has
been found in the texts to suggest anything like Mahayana doctrinal
developments. This is in accord with the apparent connection of the
scrolls with an establishment of the Dharmaguptakas (see sec. 2), a
non-Mahayana sect generally understood to be affiliated with the
Sarvastivadins.

Some, though by no means all, of the texts have either direct
parallels or partial similarities to portions of the Pali canon or
to Chinese translations of northern Indian Buddhist texts. Of
special interest is an apparent concentration of texts parallel or
related to various parts of the Pali Khuddaka-nikaya, and especially
the Sutta-nipata. These include the aforementioned Gandhari version
of the "Rhinoceros' Horn Sutra" (Khagga-visana-sutta), which appears
as the third sutra in the Pali Sutta-nipata, as well as a commentary
on a sequence of verses, most of which correspond to passages from
various sections of the Sutta-nipata. Another scroll preserves a
small fragment that matches well with the concluding portion of the
Bhiksu-varga of the Gandhari Dharmapada, which in turn closely
resembles the Uraga-sutta, the first sutta of the Pali Sutta-nipata.
This pattern of close association with the Sutta-nipata is of
special interest because the Sutta-nipata generally, and certain
parts of it in particular (including the Khaggavisana-sutta and the
Uraga-sutta), have long been felt by Buddhist scholars to represent
one of the earliest strata of the Pali canon, on the grounds of
their numerous linguistic, stylistic, and doctrinal archaisms. The
apparent concentration of Sutta-nipata-related texts in the new
Gandhari corpus thus is likely not only to confirm the long-standing
hypothesis of the antiquity and importance of this collection, but
also to illuminate its textual history and role in the propagation
of early Buddhism. This, of course, is only one example of the many
contributions which the new documents can be expected to make to the
study of Indian Buddhist textual and doctrinal history.

7. Linguistic and paleographical features
The new documents should also prove to be highly useful for
linguistic and paleographic studies. As might be expected, the
various manuscripts show considerable divergences and
inconsistencies in their renderings of the Gandhari language,
reinforcing the impression gained from the previously known
specimens, mostly epigraphical, that the language was never fully
standardized or regularized. However, these differences, though
considerable, are likely to be more on the level of orthography than
of actual dialectal or chronological variation. Examples of notable
orthographic or dialectal peculiarities which were previously
attested only sporadically, if at all, in Gandhari documents include
the replacement, in one set of texts in the same hand, of g by gh in
all cases. We also find in several documents the use of the
subscript pre-consonantal form of r to denote, apparently, a
geminate consonant; for instance, in the Rhinoceros' Horn Sutra MS
the word for "rhinoceros" (Sanskrit khadga) is regularly spelled
(according to conventional transcription) kharga, which seems to
reflect the pronunciation khagga.

Also worthy of note is the absence of certain dialectal/orthographic
features peculiar to the Gandhari Dharmapada, such as its
distinctive treatment of combinations of nasal + homorganic stop of
the type vinadi = Sanskrit vindati (Brough 1962: 98-99). These
contrasts make it clear that the linguistic and orthographic
peculiarities of the Dharmapada text do not represent a simple
contrast between literary and epigraphic Gandhari, as it might have
seemed until now. Detailed linguistic and paleographic study of the
new documents should gradually clarify the complex patterns of
development of Gandhari as a literary language.
8. Plans for study and publication

In 1996, the British Library and the University of Washington
entered into a formal cooperative agreement in order to facilitate
the efficient and systematic study and publication of this new
collection of early Buddhist manuscripts, once again with the
assistance of an anonymous donor. The goal of the project is to
coordinate the preparation of a series of volumes, to be published
by the British Library, containing editions, translations, and
studies of the texts. An initial introductory volume containing a
detailed description and survey of the collection is currently under
preparation and is to be published as soon as possible. This is to
be followed by the first text volume, which will present the
"Rhinoceros' Horn Sutra" and associated texts. Plans for further
volumes, including a projected facsimile edition of the manuscripts,
are currently under discussion.
RICHARD SALOMON UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
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Brough, John. 1962, The Gandhari Dharmapada. London Oriental Series
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