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R.C. Jamieson

T

WO Cambridge Lotus SËtra palm leaf manuscripts from around
one thousand years ago, Add. 1682 and Add. 1683, are reproduced
here in this facsimile edition.
Add. 1682 and Add. 1683 were the two manuscripts used by Hendrik
Kern in his translation of the Sanskrit text into English, The Saddharma-pundarîka or the lotus of the true law (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1884, Sacred books of the East ; vol. XXI).
Eugène Burnouf was working on the text long before the Cambridge
manuscripts came to Europe. He had three nineteenth century manuscripts in Paris which he used for his French translation, Le lotus de labonne loi, traduit du sanscrit, accompagné d’un commentaire et devingt et un mémoires relatifs au bouddhisme (Paris: Imprimerienationale, 1852). Burnouf had completed his translation using only one
manuscript, Société Asiatique, Paris, no. 2, which had been sent to Parisin 1837 by Brian Houghton Hodgson, British Minister Resident inKå†hmåˆ∂Ë. Afterwards he added long notes which were based on Bibliothèque Nationale de France, manuscript nos. 138–139 [P1] and nos.
140–141 [P2].
Add. 1683 and Add. 1684 were the two Cambridge manuscripts
among the seven used for Hendrik Kern and Bunyiu Nanjio’s edition of
the Sanskrit text Saddharmapuˆ∂ar¥ka, (St. Pétersbourg: Imprimerie del’Académie Impériale des Sciences, [1908–]1912, Bibliotheca Buddhica; 10). Their “Preliminary Notice” on page [XIII] rather unfortunately
refers to the wrong Cambridge manuscript numbers. “Ca.: Add. MS.
1682” is wrong, their Ca is actually Add. 1683 [Cb]. “Cb.: Add. MS.
1683” is also wrong, their Cb is actually Add. 1684 [Cc]. This is
explained in a footnote on page 254 of the volume for 1927 of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society in an article by Nikolai Mironov under
the title “Buddhist miscellanea”. Willy Baruch also pointed these errors
out in footnotes to page 2 and page 7 of his Beiträge zum Saddharmapuˆ∂ar¥kasËtra (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1938).
The present facsimile edition includes line and page numbers corre165

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sponding with this edition.
Editions that followed do not appear to have involved consulting theCambridge manuscripts even as microfilms, but Kern and Nanjio’s edition will of course have played a large part in all later editions.
Unrai Ogiwara [a.k.a. Unrai Wogihara] and Chikao Tsuchida [a.k.a.
Katsuya Tsuchida] used another Sanskrit manuscript in their Saddharmapuˆ∂ar¥ka-sËtram = Kaitei Bonbun HokekyØ : romanized andrevised text of the Bibliotheca Buddhica publication by consulting a
Sanskrit MS. and Tibetan and Chinese translations (3 vols, TØkyØ:Seigo-KenkyËkai, 1934–1935). Their new manuscript was available asa facsimile publication, but the original Sanskrit manuscript was consulted. It is dated 1070 and brought to Japan by Ekai Kawaguchi in1916 from Shalu monastery 40 kilometres south of Shigatse in Tibet.
(The Kawaguchi manuscript used by Kern and Nanjio for their
1908–1912 Sanskrit edition was from Nepal directly and became MS.
No. 414 (old number 62) at the University of Tokyo Library, Tokyo.)
A very helpful reference source to their edition is the index: Zuiei
ItØ’s Bonbun HokekyØ Ogiwara, Tsuchida-bon sØsakuin = Comprehensive index to Wogihara and Tsuchida’s Saddharmapuˆ∂ar¥kasËtram
(TØkyØ: Benseisha, Heisei 5 [1993]).
Another very important and impressively detailed Sanskrit, Tibetan
and Chinese index, centred on the Kern and Nanjio edition, is Yasunori
Ejima’s Index to the Saddharmapuˆ∂ar¥kasËtra: Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese = Bon ZØ Kan HokekyØ genten sØsakuin (11 fascicles, Tokyo:
Reiyukai, 1985–1993). This has since been supplemented by a further
related index, his Tibetan-Sanskrit word index to the Saddharmapuˆ∂ar¥kasËtra = ZØ Bon HokekyØ sakuin (Tokyo: Reiyukai, 1998).
Nalinaksha Dutt’s edition brought the Central Asian manuscripts into
the picture when he published them in footnotes in his Saddharmapuˆ∂ar¥kasËtram, with N. D. Mironov’s readings from Central Asian
MSS. (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1953, Bibliotheca indica ; 176 ; Issue
number, 1565). That book simply reproduces the Kern and Nanjio text
without its variant readings, giving instead in footnotes the variant readings from Mironov’s notes in typescript, deposited with the Asiatic
Society, Calcutta. It gives variant readings from the Ogiwara andTsuchida edition in the footnotes, and also some Gilgit manuscript readings. He provides a helpful English summary of the text on pages
xxvii–lvii.
Paraßuråma Lakshmaˆa Vaidya provides “a co-ordinated edition
based on the three above-mentioned editions” with indices of verses,
proper names and “rare and difficult words with their meanings” in his

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Saddharmapuˆ∂ar¥kasËtra (Darbhanga: Mithila Institute of Post-Graduate Studies and Research in Sanskrit Learning, 1960, Buddhist Sanskrit texts ; no. 6).
In Cambridge University Library there are six Lotus manuscripts:
Add. 1032 (nineteenth century paper) from Nepal collected by
Wright accessioned 1874 [Cd, C1, C32, ]Add. 1324 (nineteenth century paper) from Nepal collected by
Wright accessioned 1875 [Ce, C2, C24]
Add. 1682 (tenth or eleventh century palm leaf) from Nepal collectedby Wright accessioned 1876 [Ca, C3, C2]
Add. 1683 (palm leaf dated 1039 [not 1036]) from Nepal collectedby Wright accessioned 1876 [Cb, C4, C3]
Add. 1684 (palm leaf dated 1063/1064) from Nepal collected by
Wright accessioned 1876 [Cc, C5, C4]
Add. 2197 (palm leaf dated 1093, rewritten leaves dated 1686, a strayleaf at the end is dated 1065) from Nepal collected by Bendall
accessioned 1885 [Cf, C6, C7](Various abbreviations are used in different publications: C followed byan alphabetical letter is the most common, used by Kern, Ogiwara,
Baruch, Yuyama and the like, C followed by a subscript number wasused by RisshØ Daigaku’s HokekyØ Bunka KenkyËjo between 1977
and 1982, then the same numbers were used without being subscriptfrom 1986 by the Society for the Study of Saddharmapundarika Manuscripts, C followed by a superscript number was used by Watanabe.)An article describing these six manuscripts was published in 1968:“Kenburijji Daigaku Toshokan shozØ: Bonbun HokekyØ shahon” in
Hokke bunka, No. 6 (September 1968), pages 5–7. There one can see
reproductions of leaves from four of the Cambridge manuscripts, Add.
1682 folio 50 verso, Add. 1683 folio 97 verso, Add. 1684 folio 38
recto, Add. 2197 folio 107 verso.
Add. 1326, a Dhåraˆ¥saµgraha, contains six dhåraˆ¥ from the Saddharmapuˆ∂ar¥ka SËtra. Akira Yuyama lists this in Appendix II Saddharmapuˆ∂ar¥kamantradhåraˆ¥ (page 58) of his A bibliography of the
Sanskrit texts of the Saddharmapuˆ∂ar¥kasËtra (Canberra: Australian
National University Press, 1970). Though this work was done morethan a quarter of a century ago, it remains an excellent bibliographynoting many of the books and articles up to October 1968. The section“Places where Sanskrit manuscript collections can be found” (page xi)
lists the Cambridge manuscripts. Plate I, page [xxxiii] reproduces palm
leaf folio 67 verso of Add. 2197. The other plates give examples of
Nepalese paper, Central Asian paper and Gilgit birch bark manuscript

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folios. His main descriptions of the Cambridge University Library manuscripts are on pages 12–13. In a footnote on page 11 he also lists themanuscripts used in Willy Baruch’s unpublished manuscript notes, an
important matter for him to report. This is a significant piece of work,
collating variant readings using some sixteen Nepalese manuscript
sources. It included all six of the Cambridge manuscripts. The notes
went to the Société Asiatique, Paris, after he died. Yuyama reports inthis 1970 publication that Baruch completed chapter one and began on
chapter two. In the SØka Daigaku Kokusai BukkyØgaku KØtØ KenkyËsho
nenpØ = Annual report of the International Research Institute forAdvanced Buddhology at Soka University for the academic year 1997(TØkyØ: SØka Daigaku Kokusai BukkyØgaku KØtØ KenkyËsho), on
page 43, Yuyama reports that this had been an assumption based on the
copy he had been sent of chapter one and part of chapter two and that in1971 he learned from Jean Filliozat that all chapters had been collated
and the notes consist of 3,516 sheets.
The two manuscripts reproduced in facsimile here are found described on pages 172–173 in Cecil Bendall’s Catalogue of the Buddhist
Sanskrit manuscripts in the University Library, with introductory
notices and illustrations of the palæography and chronology of Nepal
and Bengal (Cambridge: University Press, 1883). Add. 1032, Add.
1324, Add. 1682, Add. 1683 and Add. 1684, collected by Wright, are inthis catalogue. Add. 2197, collected by Bendall, came into the library’s
collection after the catalogue had been published. It is listed under section XI “Buddhist works (all from Nepal)” on page 46 of his A journeyof literary and archæological research in Nepal and northern India,
during the winter of 1884–5 (Cambridge: University Press, 1886).
So the two manuscripts reproduced here are among those collectedby Daniel Wright in Nepal between 1873 and 1876. He bought manuscripts through local paˆ∂its in Bhåtgåoˆ and Kå†hmåˆ∂Ë.
Daniel Wright was the surgeon to the British Residency at Kå†hmåˆ∂Ë from 1873 to 1876. Edward Cowell, the Professor of Sanskrit,suggested through Daniel’s brother, William Wright, Professor of Arabic at Cambridge, that modern copies of works extant in Nepal might
be made for the library in Cambridge. Add. 1042 was the example
sent, five leaves that were written in 1873. But this resulted in original
manuscripts of great antiquity being offered, and they became the coreof the collection at Cambridge.
Shew Shunker Singh and Gunånand’s translation of Add. 1952, a
genealogy (vaµßåval¥), History of Nepal translated from the parbatiyå
(Cambridge: University Press, 1877) was edited by Daniel Wright. It

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includes his own introductory sketch of the country and people of Nepal(pages 1–75) and his rough list of manuscripts procured by him in
Nepal for the University of Cambridge (Appendix IX, pages 316–324).
(Reprints of this book vary in quality, the New Delhi: Cosmo, 1990
reprint is useful, the Calcutta: Susil Gupta, 1958 reprint is poor, notwell set out, with different pagination and omitting all the illustrations.)
Edward Cowell began to prepare the catalogue of the manuscripts
and then asked Bendall to complete the work, a huge task. Not only is it
important as a catalogue, but also as a survey on the dating of Buddhist
Sanskrit manuscripts and on their palaeography.
These are the first of our Buddhist Sanskrit manuscripts to be madeavailable as facsimiles.
Cambridge University Library has one of the most important collections of Buddhist Sanskrit manuscripts in the world, some would say
the most important. In the editions and translations of many Buddhist
Sanskrit texts it is common to see Cambridge manuscripts cited, andoften they are early sources, sometimes the earliest. It is essential that
we make these sources as widely available as possible, while balancing
the fact that even the most careful use of the originals by numbers ofreaders is very hard on such fragile materials.
All of the illustrations of our famous A∑†asåhasrikåprajñåpåramitå
palm leaf manuscript of 997 were reproduced in The perfection of wisdom (New York: Penguin Viking ; London: Frances Lincoln, 2000). It
also includes a number of the illustrations from our A∑†asåhasrikåprajñåpåramitå palm leaf manuscript of 1015. This was a milestone in
making items from our manuscript collection available to a wider public at an affordable cost. Scholars know they can have microfilm or CDROMs of items in our collection, but many more people will read an art
book than would ever order microfilms or CD-ROMs. Reproducing
full facsimiles of palm leaf manuscripts is another aspect of making ourcollection more widely available.
There is a tradition of Lotus SËtra facsimiles. Many readers will befamiliar with the facsimile mentioned above of the Nepalese Sanskrit
manuscript brought to Japan by Ekai Kawaguchi in 1916 from the
Shalu monastery in Tibet, ChØtatsu Ikeda’s Saddharmapuˆ∂ar¥kanåma[ma]håyånasËtram = Bonbun HokekyØ (TØkyØ: BukkyØ Sen’yØkai,1926). This black and white facsimile of the palm leaf manuscript is
accompanied by Japanese and English prefaces explaining how themanuscript was given to Ekai Kawaguchi. The leaves are reproduced ina reduced size, but they are reasonably legible. This original 1926 publication was put out again in 1956 (TØkyØ: Bonbun HokekyØ Hanpukai,

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1956) and that is much more common in libraries. Hirofumi Toda tellsme the 1956 “reprint” is more a repackaging, thirty year old stock wasprobably rebound in the same covers but with a new colophon. He mentions that letterpress indentation on the reverse sides of the pages otherthan the facsimile portion would not be identical in two separate printings, and that the paper deterioration between the 1926 and 1956
imprints seems equal. The printing process of the manuscript facsimile
pages would have been by collotype, a kind of planography using a thinplate or sheet of gelatin, the sensitized surface of which has been etchedby the action of the actinic properties of light rays, so that it can be
printed from. The price of the 1926 book was 15 yen, the price of the1956 book was 3,500 yen. The manuscript itself went to the TØyØBunko in TØkyØ.
ShØkØ Watanabe provided romanized text and photographic facsimiles from microfilm of birch bark manuscripts from Gilgit in the National Archives of the Government of India in New Delhi in his Saddharmapuˆ∂ar¥ka manuscripts found in Gilgit (2 vols, Tokyo: Reiyukai,
1972–1975). These are the famous manuscripts from a collapsed stupa
in Gilgit, Kashmir that received attention worldwide in the 1930s.
Raghu Vira and Lokesh Chandra also provided facsimiles in their
Gilgit Buddhist manuscripts : a facsimile edition (New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1974, Parts 9–10, Íata-pi†aka series,
Indo-Asian literatures ; vol. 10). It has very helpful concordances with
Nalinaksha Dutt’s edition (Part 9, pages 3–12 and Part 10, pages 1–7).
Lokesh Chandra and Heinz Bechert’s facsimile edition, taken frommicrofilm sources, provides a facsimile of a Central Asian manuscript :Saddharma-puˆ∂ar¥ka-sËtra : Kashgar manuscript (New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1976, Íata-pi†aka series, IndoAsian literatures ; vol. 229). Each folio is provided with a reference tothe page and line in Dutt’s 1953 edition of the text. It brings Central
Asian fragments together from the collections of the State Library of
Berlin [Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin] and the British Library in London,
along with the Russian microfilm given by Jawaharlal Nehru to Raghu
Vira in 1956. Nehru had been given it by Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolay Bulganin in 1955.
It is a microfilm of the famous Kashgar manuscript obtained in 1903
by N. F. Petrovsky, the Russian Consul General, and now in the Central
Asian Collection of the Manuscript Archive of the St Petersburg Branchof the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
This is the source for the readings marked “O” in Kern’s 1912 edition,
the manuscript and other Kashgar manuscript fragments he used are

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discussed there in his “Additional note” pages [v]–xii.
This was followed by Hirofumi Toda’s romanized edition, Saddharmapuˆ∂ar¥kasËtra : Central Asian manuscripts = ChËØ Ajia shutsudo
Bonbun HokekyØ, romanized text edited with an introduction, tables
and indices (2nd edition, Tokushima: Kyoiku Shuppan Center, 1983).
Many other editions and journal articles provide at least some platesof manuscript sources.
The present publication is the fourth in the Soka Gakkai’s Lotus
Sutra manuscript series.
The first was edited by Jiang Zhongxin in his Sanskrit Lotus Sutra
fragments from the Lüshun Museum collection, facsimile edition andromanized text = Lü shun bo wu guan cang Fan wen Fa hua jing canpian, ying yin ban ji luo ma zi ban = Ryojun Hakubutsukan shozØ Bonbun HokekyØ dankan : shashin-ban oyobi rØmaji-ban (Lüshun : Lüshun
Museum ; Tokyo : Soka Gakkai, 1997, Lotus Sutra manuscript series ;1). The port of Lüshun is a place which has seen so much war, so it ispoignant and fitting that it should provide the manuscript fragments forthe first reproduction of facsimiles in this series.
The second was the Sanskrit Lotus Sutra manuscript from the
National Archives of Nepal (No. 4-21), facsimile edition = Saddharmapuˆ∂ar¥kasËtram Nepåla Rå∑†riya Abhilekhålayako Saddharmapuˆ∂ar¥ka hastalikhita grantha (la. ca. 21), pratilipi saµskaraˆa = Nepåru
Kokuritsu KØbunshokan shozØ Bonbun HokekyØ shahon (no. 4-21),
shashin-ban (Tokyo: Soka Gakkai, 1998, Lotus Sutra manuscript series;2). This is well produced in a traditional unbound format, echoing thepalm leaf format of the original manuscript.
It was complemented by Hirofumi Toda’s Sanskrit Lotus Sutra manuscript from the National Archives of Nepal (No. 4-21), romanized text
1 = Saddharmapuˆ∂ar¥kasËtram Nepåla Rå∑†riya Abhilekhålayako Saddharmapuˆ∂ar¥ka hastalikhita grantha (la. ca. 21), roman¥k®ta saµskaraˆa 1 = Nepåru Kokuritsu KØbunshokan shozØ Bonbun HokekyØ
shahon (no. 4-21), rØmaji-ban 1 (Tokyo: Soka Gakkai, 2001, Lotus
Sutra manuscript series ; 2–2).
The third was edited by Klaus Wille in his Fragments of a Manuscript of the Saddharmapuˆ∂ar¥kasËtra from Khådaliq (Tokyo: Soka
Gakkai, 2000, Lotus Sutra manuscript series ; 3). It brings Central
Asian fragments together from the collections of the State Library of
Berlin [Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin], the State Museum of Ethnology in
Munich [Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde, München], and theBritish Library in London, providing colour facsimiles, transliteration
into romanized script and concordances.

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Many scholars, especially young scholars living far from significant
manuscript collections, will find the facsimiles of important tenth oreleventh century Buddhist Sanskrit manuscripts in this fourth volume inthe series very useful. The amount of work someone can do from such asource is considerable, and without the wear and tear on the originals,
which can be so worrying. Obviously scholars of early manuscripts
work from microfilm and/or CD-ROM versions before they turn to theoriginals. But a good facsimile can come so much closer to the feel of amanuscript than a microfilm reader or a computer screen. All threeforms of reproduction are invaluable tools though, in different ways.
When working with these facsimiles, or for that matter with manuscripts of the Lotus SËtra, an interesting reference work is RisshØ University’s Institute for the Comprehensive Study of Lotus Sutra’s
Sanskrit manuscripts of Saddharmapuˆ∂ar¥ka : collected from Nepal,
Kashmir, and Central Asia = Bonbun HokekyØ shahon shËsei (RisshØ
Daigaku : HokekyØ Bunka KenkyËjo, 12 vols, Tokyo: Publishing Association of Saddharmapundarika Manuscripts [Bonbun HokekyØ KankØkai], 1977–1982). It collates “more than thirty varieties of Sanskrit
manuscripts” (page vi). The original prospectus outlined fifteen volumes but the originally planned volumes 13–15 (Fragments of MSS.,Palæography, Concordance, Index) were not published. (The manuscripts N1 and N2 were transposed in this publication, an unfortunate
error, but simple to deal with if the reader is aware of it.)
What is now being published though is Sanskrit manuscripts of Saddharmapuˆ∂ar¥ka : collected from Nepal, Kashmir, and Central Asia,
romanized text and index = Bonbun HokekyØ shahon shËsei, rØmajibon sakuin (Tokyo: Society for the Study of Saddharmapundarika Manuscripts [Bonbun HokekyØ KenkyËkai], 1986– ). This is projected to becomplete in fourteen volumes. So far two volumes have appeared, one
in 1986 one in 1988, I hope we will soon see more. This publication is ahuge task and the people involved are to be commended for taking onsuch valuable work. It is always wise with romanized text to check theoriginals at least in the form of microfilms or some other reproductions.
But it has to be said that researchers report these volumes to fall wellshort of the accuracy it is reasonable to expect. Use them with greatcare. In the long run the first two volumes may need to be redone. Thispublication discusses “Manuscripts of the Cambridge University Library” on page (10) of volume 1, providing helpful references for anyone
interested in how the precise dates of the manuscripts are determined,
and how precise interpretation of dates are debated, including Claus
Vogel’s “The dated Nepalese manuscripts of the Saddharmapuˆ∂ar¥ka-

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sËtra” (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974, Nachrichten der
Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Philologisch-Historische
Klasse ; 1974, 5) and Luciano Petech’s Mediaeval history of Nepal (c.
750-1482) (2nd thoroughly revised edition, Roma: Istituto italiano peril Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1984, Serie orientale Roma ; 54). (Themanuscripts N1 and N2 are not transposed in this publication, they referto the correct manuscripts. Readers will quickly notice the difference inwhat is transliterated as N1 and N2 and what appeared incorrectly in the
reproductions of the 12 volume set as N1 and N2. The “Editorial notes”
on page 83 point this out in note (7).)
We hope that others might come forward to help us produce facsimiles of other manuscripts in Cambridge University Library’s collection;
it strikes me that many collectors would like to have the complete Add.
1464, the oldest dated illustrated Indian manuscript in the world, Add.
1643, the oldest dated illustrated Nepalese manuscript in the world, oreven the unillustrated Add. 1049, dated 859.
For the present facsimile edition I would like especially to thankNoriyoshi Mizufune of the Institute of Oriental Philosophy in Tokyo
who was the main driving force behind the work of this project, Hirofumi Toda of the University of Tokushima who has provided useful notes
and much more, Einosuke Akiya, president of the Soka Gakkai, for hiskind acknowledgements in this publication, and Jamie Cresswell who
liaised from the Institute of Oriental Philosophy European Centre in
Maidenhead. And especially I would like to thank Daisaku Ikeda, president of the Soka Gakkai International, for his foreword to this publication, and because the Soka Gakkai is doing such impressive work inmaking known the three Sanskrit Lotus SËtra traditions: the Nepalesetradition, the Central Asian tradition and in time the Gilgit tradition as
well. Various manuscripts from each tradition have been preserved
around the world. The two Cambridge manuscripts from Nepal reproduced here will now be much more widely available for study than anyone could have expected even a few years ago.
15 March 2002
*This article is reprinted from the Sanskrit Lotus Sutra Manuscripts from
Cambridge University Library (Add. 1682 and Add. 1683), Facsimile Edition (Tokyo: Soka Gakkai, 2002).