ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Institute of Oriental Philosophy was founded by Soka Gakkai International (SGI)
President Daisaku Ikeda on January 27, 1962. Now, on the happy occasion of the 50thyear since its founding, we are celebrating the successful completion of its progress toproduce and publish the facsimile edition of Gilgit manuscripts of the Lotus Sutra
belonging to the National Archives of India. We wish to offer to all who participated inthis project our heartiest congratulations and thanks.
In July of 2010, Professor Dr. Lokesh Chandra, the Director of the International
Academy of Indian Culture, a Buddhologist and authority of world standing on matterspertaining to the Vedic language, with whom the members of the Institute of Oriental
Philosophy had been cooperating, sent a letter to SGI President Ikeda, the founder of theinstitute. In it, Dr. L. Chandra writes that when he showed the facsimile editions andromanized versions of the Lotus Sutra Manuscript Series to Professor Mushirul Hasanof the National Archives of India and the other members of his organization, theyexpressed their admiration to the researchers and staff of the Institute of Oriental
Philosophy, working on behalf of the Soka Gakkai, for the splendid way in which theproject had turned out.
In February of 2011, I and other staff members of the Institute of Oriental
Philosophy, together with Dr. Noriyuki Kudo, Associate Professor at the International
Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology of Soka University, paid a visit to theNational Archives of India in New Delhi. At that time, we consulted with the Director
General, Professor Mushirul Hasan, the Deputy Director, Dr. Sanjay Garg, and theDeputy Director, Dr. Meena Gautam, regarding matters pertaining to publications offacsimile editions of the valuable Gilgit manuscripts in the possession of the National
Archives. It was agreed that the assembling and publication of a facsimile edition of theGilgit Lotus Sutra manuscripts in the possession of the National Archives should be
carried out jointly by the Soka Gakkai and the Institute of Oriental Philosophy, and thatthe assembling and publication of facsimiles containing other sutras’ Gilgit manuscripts
should be left to the undertakings of Soka University’s International Research Institutefor Advanced Buddhology. Later, these agreements were put into formal language anddistributed to all those concerned.
The bulk of these manuscripts, which were discovered in 1931 in the interior of abuilding in Naupur, near Gilgit in the region of Kashmir, were turned over to the care of
the National Archives of India, although a few of them escaped to countries outside ofIndia. Those that did so were folios or fragments of manuscripts, which have since been

published and their contents made known by scholars studying them in Europe, India,Japan, and other countries. Later, in 1974, through the efforts of Dr. Raghu Vira and Dr.
Lokesh Chandra, most of the photographs possessed by the National Archives of India
have been published in the Śata-Piṭaka Series 10 in New Delhi. In 1982 Dr. Oskar vonHinüber published A New Fragmentary Gilgit Manuscript of theSaddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra, a copy of the Gilgit fragmentary Lotus Sutra manuscript
preserved in the Sir Pratap Singh Museum in Srinagar, Kashmir.
Though 80 years have passed since the discovery of the Gilgit manuscripts, wecannot say that the circumstances of their discovery, the state in which they were found,or the historical conditions of the time, have been subjected to the kind of deep andsearching inquiry that one would like. However, with the introductory article suppliedby Dr. Hinüber to the manuscripts published at this time, something of one’s hopes isfinally fulfilled. In it, not only the manuscripts of the Lotus Sutra but those of othersutras as well are supplied with the sort of background material of the sociological andcultural circumstances that surrounded the Gilgit finds, in a manner sufficient to meetthose demands.
And in addition, the introductory remarks supplied by Dr. Lokesh Chandra to thestudy draw attention to the special importance of the finds, including those of the Lotus
Sutra manuscripts, and briefly outline their special importance and the progress of theirexamination.
With the realization of a colored facsimile edition of the Gilgit Lotus Sutra
manuscripts, work can now begin on comparisons between it and other texts of theSanskrit Lotus Sutra, which will contribute to the main concerns of scholars of thephilological significance of the finds. While, because of the extremely rich andabundant number and volume of the Nepalese Lotus manuscripts, there remains much
fertile ground for further study of them, according to the researches of the late Professor
Hirofumi Toda, Professor Emeritus of Tokushima University, the oldest readings of theNepalese Lotus manuscripts appear to be quite close to those of the Gilgit manuscripts,and he states that the Gilgit readings are related to those in the Tibetan versions of thesutra.
One of the objectives of the Lotus Sutra Manuscript Series is to examine andcompare various readings of the Nepalese manuscripts and clarify those readings intogroups. The results of the study by the late Professor Shoko Watanabe, found in his
Saddharmapuṇḍarīka Manuscripts Found in Gilgit, Part One and Part Two, which waspublished in 1972 and 1975, has offered a start in the study of their relations to theGilgit manuscripts. And the present publication continues the process, building on theresults of the previous endeavors and will make it possible to go into concrete
philological studies, following Professor Toda’s speculations.
In closing, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to all those who contributed
to this publication, to Dr. Lokesh Chandra, Professor Mushirul Hasan, Director of theNational Archives of India, and to all their associates, to Dr. Oskar von Hinüber ofFreiburg University of Germany, who contributed an introductory article, and toDirector Professor Seishi Karashima and Associate Professor Noriyuki Kudo of theInternational Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University whooffered to us their valuable advice, to Mr. Noriyoshi Mizufune, Researcher in charge ofmanuscript projects of the Institute of Oriental Philosophy, and to all the others whohelped to bring this project to a successful conclusion.
Yoichi KawadaDirector
Institute of Oriental Philosophy
January 27, 2012