Introduction
Two Cambridge Lotus Sūtra 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 histranslation 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 la bonne loi, traduit du sanscrit, accompagné d’uncommentaire et de vingt 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 Paris in 1837 by Brian Houghton
Hodgson, British Minister Resident in Kāṭhmāṇḍū. 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
Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, (St. Pétersbourg: Imprimerie de l’Académie Impériale desSciences, [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” isalso wrong, their Cb is actually Add. 1684 [Cc]. This is explained in a footnote on page254 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
Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1938).
The present facsimile edition includes line and page numbers corresponding withthis edition.
Editions that followed do not appear to have involved consulting the Cambridge
manuscripts even as microfilms, but Kern and Nanjio’s edition will of course haveplayed a 1arge 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 Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtram =Kaitei Bonbun Hokekyō: romanized and revised text of the Bibliotheca Buddhica
publication by consulting a Sanskrit MS. and Tibetan and Chinese translations (3 vols,

Tōkyō: Seigo-Kenkyūkai, 1934-1935). Their new manuscript was available as a
facsimile publication, but the original Sanskrit manuscript was consulted. It is dated
1070 and brought to Japan by Ekai Kawaguchi in 1916 from Shalu monastery 40
kilometres south of Shigatse in Tibet. (The Kawaguchi manuscript used by Kern andNanjio 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 Itō’s Bonbun
Hokekyō Ogiwara, Tsuchida-bon sōsakuin = Comprehensive index to Wogihara andTsuchida’s Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtram (Tōkyō: 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
Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra: Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese = Bon Zō Kan Hokekyō gentensōsakuin (11 fascicles, Tokyo: Reiyukai, 1985-1993). This has since been supplemented
by a further related index, his Tibetan-Sanskrit word index to the
Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra = Zō Bon Hokekyō sakuin (Tokyo: Reiyukai, 1998).
Nalinaksha Dutt’s edition brought the Central Asian manuscripts into the picture
when he published them in footnotes in his Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtram, with N.D.
Mironov’s readings from Central Asian MSS. (Caicutta: Asiatic Society, 1953,
Bibliotheca indica; 176; Issue number, 1565). That book simply reproduces the Kernand 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 and Tsuchida edition in thefootnotes, and also some Gilgit manuscript readings. He provides a helpful English
summary of the text on pages xxvii-lvii.
Paraśurāma Lakshmaṇa 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 Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra (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, C 1 , C32,]
Add. 1324 (nineteenth century paper) from Nepal collected by Wright accessioned
1875 [Ce, C 2 , C24]
Add. 1682 (tenth or eleventh century palm leaf) from Nepal collected by Wrightaccessioned 1876 [Ca, C 3 , C2]

Add. 1683 (palm leaf dated 1039 [not 1036]) from Nepal collected by Wrightaccessioned 1876 [Cb, C 4 , C3]
Add. 1684 (palm leaf dated 1063/1064) from Nepal collected by Wrightaccessioned 1876 [Cc, C 5 , C4]
Add. 2197 (pa1m leaf dated 1093, rewritten leaves dated 1686, a stray leaf at theend is dated 1065) from Nepal collected by Bendall accessioned 1885 [Cf, C 6 ,C7](Various abbreviations are used in different publications: C followed by an alphabeticalletter is the most common, used by Kern, Ogiwara, Baruch, Yuyama and the like, C
followed by a subscript number was used by Risshō Daigaku’s Hokekyō Bunka
Kenkyūjo between 1977 and 1982, then the same numbers were used without being
subscript from 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 shozō: Bonbun Hokekyō shahon” in Hokke bunka, No. 6 (September1968), 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 Dhāraṇīsaṃgraha, contains six dhāraṇī from the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka
Sūtra. Akira Yuyama lists this in Appendix II Saddharmapuṇḍarīkamantradhāraṇī
(page58) of his A bibliography of the Sanskrit texts of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra(Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1970). Though this work was done
more than a quarter of a century ago, it remains an excellent bibliography noting manyof 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
folios. His main descriptions of the Cambridge University Library manuscripts are on
pages 12-13. In a footnote on page 11 he also lists the manuscripts used in Willy
Baruch’s unpublished manuscript notes, an important matter for him to report. This is asignificant piece of work, collating variant readings using some sixteen Nepalesemanuscript sources. It included all six of the Cambridge manuscripts. The notes went to
the Société Asiatique, Paris, after he died. Yuyama reports in this 1970 publication that
Baruch completed chapter one and began on chapter two. In the Sōka Daigaku Kokusai
Bukkyōgaku Kōtō Kenkyūsho nenpō = Annual report of the International ResearchInstitute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University for the academic year 1997

(Tōkyō: Sōka Daigaku Kokusai Bukkyōgaku Kōtō Kenkyūsho), 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 in 1971 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 andchronology of Nepal and Bengal (Cambridge: University Press, 1883). Add. 1032, Add.
1324, Add. 1682, Add. 1683 and Add. 1684, collected by Wright, are in this 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 journey of 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 collected by Daniel
Wright in Nepal between 1873 and 1876. He bought manuscripts through local paṇḍits
in Bhātgāoṇ and Kāṭhmāṇḍū.
Daniel Wright was the surgeon to the British Residency at Kāṭhmāṇḍū 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 core of the collection at Cambridge.
Shew Shunker Singh and Gunānand’s translation of Add. 1952, a genealogy(vaṃśāvalī), History of Nepal translated from the parbatiyā (Cambridge: University
Press, 1877) was edited by Daniel Wright. It includes his own introductory sketch of thecountry and people of Nepal (pages 1-75) and his rough list of manuscripts procured byhim in Nepal for the University of Cambridge (Appendix IX, pages 316-324). (Reprintsof this book vary in quality, the New Delhi: Cosmo, 1990 reprint is useful, the Calcutta:
Susil Gupta, 1958 reprint is poor, not well set out, with different pagination andomitting 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, butalso as a survey on the dating of Buddhist Sanskrit manuscripts and on theirpalaeography.
These are the first of our Buddhist Sanskrit manuscripts to be made available asfacsimiles.

Cambridge University Library has one of the most important collections of
Buddhist Sanskrit manuscripts in the world, some would say the most important. In theeditions and translations of many Buddhist Sanskrit texts it is common to see
Cambridge manuscripts cited, and often 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 of readers is very
hard on such fragile materials.
All of the illustrations of our famous Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā 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 Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā palm leaf manuscript of 1015. This was amilestone in making items from our manuscript collection available to a wider public at
an affordable cost. Scholars know they can have microfilm or CD-ROMs of items in ourcollection, but many more people will read an art book than would ever ordermicrofilms or CD-ROMs. Reproducing full facsimiles of palm leaf manuscripts is
another aspect of making our collection more widely available.
There is a tradition of Lotus Sūtra facsimiles. Many readers wil1 be familiar withthe facsimile mentioned above of the Nepalese Sanskrit manuscript brought to Japan by
Ekai Kawaguchi in 1916 from the Shalu monastery in Tibet, Chōtatsu Ikeda’s
Saddharmapuṇḍarīkanāma[ma]hāyānasūtram = Bonbun Hokekyō (Tōkyō: Bukkyō
Sen’yōkai, 1926). This black and white facsimile of the palm 1eaf manuscript is
accompanied by Japanese and English prefaces explaining how the manuscript wasgiven to Ekai Kawaguchi. The leaves are reproduced in a reduced size, but they arereasonably legible. This original 1926 pub1ication was put out again in 1956 (Tōkyō:Bonbun Hokekyō Hanpukai, 1956) and that is much more common in libraries.
Hirofumi Toda tells me the 1956 “reprint” is more a repackaging, thirty year old stock
was probably rebound in the same covers but with a new colophon. He mentions that
letterpress indentation on the reverse sides of the pages other than 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 themanuscript facsimile pages would have been by collotype, a kind of planography using
a thin plate or sheet of gelatin, the sensitized surface of which has been etched by theaction of the actinic properties of light rays, so that it can be printed from. The price ofthe 1926 book was 15 yen, the price of the 1956 book was 3,500 yen. The manuscript
itself went to the Tōyō Bunko in Tōkyō.
Shōkō Watanabe provided romanized text and photographic facsimiles from

microfilm of birch bark manuscripts from Gilgit in the National Archives of theGovernment of India in New Delhi in his Saddharmapuṇḍarīka manuscripts found in
Gilgit (2 vols, Tokyo: Reiyukai, 1972-1975). These are famous manuscripts from acollapsed 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, Śata-piṭaka 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 from microfilm
sources, provides a facsimile of a Central Asian manuscript:
Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra: Kashgar manuscript (New Delhi: International Academy ofIndian Culture, 1976, Śata-piṭaka series, Indo-Asian literatures; vol. 229). Each folio isprovided with a reference to the 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 theRussian 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 thefamous 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 Branch of 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, themanuscript and other Kashgar manuscript fragments he used are discussed there in his“Additional note” pages [v]-xii.
This was followed by Hirofumi Toda’s romanized edition,
Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra: Central Asian manuscripts = Chūō Ajia shutsudo Bonbun
Hokekyō, 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 plates of 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 fromthe Lüshun Museum collection, facsimile edition and romanized text = Lü shun bo wu
guan cang Fan wen Fa hua jing can pian, ying yin ban ji luo ma zi ban = Ryojun
Hakubutsukan shozō Bonbun Hokekyō dankan: shashin-ban oyobi rōmaji-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 is poignant and fitting that itshould provide the manuscript fragments for the first reproduction of facsimiles in thisseries.
The second was the Sanskrit Lotus Sutra manuscript from the National Archives of
Nepal (No. 4-21), facsimile edition = Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtram Nepāla Rāṣṭriya
Abhilekhālayako Saddharmapuṇḍarīka hastalikhita grantha (la. ca. 21), pratilipisaṃskaraṇa = Nepāru Kokuritsu Kōbunshokan shozō Bonbun Hokekyō shahon (no.
4-21), shashin-ban (Tokyo: Soka Gakkai, 1998, Lotus Sutra manuscript series; 2). Thisis well produced in a traditional unbound format, echoing the palm led format of theoriginal manuscript.
It was complemented by Hiroami Toda’s Sanskrit Lotus Sutra manuscript from the
National Archives of Nepal (No. 4-21), romanized text 1 = Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtram
Nepāla Rāṣṭriya Abhilekhālayako Saddharmapuṇḍarīka hastalikhita grantha (la. ca.
21), romanīkṛta saṃskaraṇa 1 = Nepāru Kokuritsu Kōbunshokan shozō Bonbun
Hokekyō shahon (no.4-21), rōmaji-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
Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra from Khādaliq (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 the British Library in
London, providing colour facsimiles, transliteration into romanized script andconcordances.
Many scholars, especially young scholars living far from significant manuscript
collections, will find the facsimiles of important tenth or eleventh century Buddhist
Sanskrit manuscripts in this fourth volume in the series very useful. The amount ofwork someone can do from such a source is considerable, and without the wear and tearon the originals, which can be so worrying. Obviously scholars of early manuscripts
work from microfilm and/or CD-ROM versions before they turn to the originals. But a
good facsimile can come so much closer to the feel of a manuscript than a microfilm
reader or a computer screen. All three forms of reproduction are invaluable tools though,in different ways.
When working with these facsimiles, or for that matter with manuscripts of the
Lotus Sūtra, an interesting reference work is Risshō University’s Institute for theComprehensive Study of Lotus Sutra’s Sanskrit manuscripts of Saddharmapuṇḍarīka:col1ected from Nepal, Kashmir, and Central Asia = Bonbun Hokekyō shahon shūsei(Risshō Daigaku: Hokekyō Bunka Kenkyūjo, 12 vols, Tokyo: Publishing Association of
Saddharmapundarika Manuscripts [Bonbun Hokekyō Kankōkai], 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 thereader is aware of it.)
What is now being published though is Sanskrit manuscripts of
Saddharmapuṇḍarīka: collected from Nepal, Kashmir, and Central Asia, romanized text
and index = Bonbun Hokekyō shahon shūsei, rōmaji-bon sakuin (Tokyo: Society for the
Study of Saddharmapundarika Manuscripts [Bonbun Hokekyō Kenkyūkai], 1986-).
This is projected to be complete 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 a huge task
and the people involved are to be commended for taking on such valuable work. It isalways wise with romanized text to check the originals at least in the form of microfilms
or some other reproductions. But it has to be said that researchers report these volumes
to fall well short of the accuracy it is reasonable to expect. Use them with great care. In
the long run the first two volumes may need to be redone. This publication 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 themanuscripts are determined, and how precise interpretation of dates are debated,
including Claus Vogel’s “The dated Nepalese manuscripts of the
Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra” (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 per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1984, Serie
orientale Roma; 54). (The manuscripts N1 and N2 are not transposed in this publication,
they refer to the correct manuscripts. Readers will quickly notice the difference in what
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 othermanuscripts in Cambridge University Library’s collection; it strikes me that manycollectors 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, or even the unillustrated Add. 1049, dated 859.
For the present facsimile edition I would like especially to thank Noriyoshi
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 his kind 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 in making known the three Sanskrit Lotus Sūtra traditions: the
Nepalese tradition, 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.
R.C. Jamieson
Keeper of Sanskrit Manuscripts
University of Cambridge
15 March 2002