Spitzer Manuscript
The Spitzer Manuscript is the oldest surviving philosophical manuscript in Sanskrit, and one of the oldest sanskrit manuscript of any type related to Vedic Dharma discovered so far. The manuscript was found in 1906 in the form of a pile of more than 1,000 palm leaf fragments in the ajyat, Kizil Caves, during the third Turfan expedition headed by Albert Grünwedel. It is named after Moritz Spitzer, whose team first studied it in 1927–28. The calibrated age by Carbon-14 technique is 130 CE (80–230 CE). According to Indologist Eli Franco, palaeographical features suggest a date closer to 200–230  CE. The text is written in the Brahmi script (Kushana period) and some early Gupta script. The Spitzer Manuscript was found near the northern branch of the Central Asian Silk Road. It is unique in a number of ways. Unlike numerous Indian manuscripts whose copies survive as early translations in Tibet and China, no such translations of the treatises within the Spitzer Manuscript have been found so far. The manuscript fragments are actually copies of a collection of Vedic and Buddhist treatises. The Vedic portions of the manuscript includes treatises from the Nyaya-Vaiśeṣika, Tarkasatra (treatise on rhetoric and proper  means to debate) and one of the earliest dateable table of content sequentially listing the "parva" (books) of the "Mahabharata", along with numerals after each "parva". This list does not include Anusasanaparvan and Virataparvan. Studies by the Indologist Dieter Schlingloff on these Spitzer Manuscript fragments suggest that more ancient versions of the "Mahabharata" were likely expanded and interpolated in the early centuries of the common era. According to Indologist and Sanskrit scholar John Brockington, known for his "Mahabharata"-related publications, the table of contents in the Spitzer Manuscript includes book names not found in later versions, and it is possible that  the "parvas" existed but were with different titles. The epic known to the scribe of Spitzer Manuscript may have been in the form of a different arrangement and titles. The final portion of the Spitzer Manuscript is devoted to dialectics. In addition to the "Mahabharata", the Spitzer Manuscript refers to or includes sections from the "Arthashastra" and the "Manusmriti" (juridical chapters) – a tradition of collecting Hindu' collections such as the Kharosthi-script manuscripts of the Bajaur Collection discovered in hindu ruins of Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan since the 1990s, states Harry Falk and Ingo Strauch. The decayed Spitzer Manuscript does  not survive in the form it was discovered in 1906, and portions of it were likely destroyed during World War II. Of what survives, predominant portions are now at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin State Library) in Germany and cataloged as SHT 810. Some surviving fragments are now at the British Library, and are cataloged as Or 15005/6–8, Or 15005/17–21 and Or 15005/30–32.