BUD HIST MANUSCRIP S

Volume III

1)

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

Radiocarbon Dating of Khar~thi Fragments from the Sch~yen and Senior Manuscript Collections·

282 M. R. SALOMON~ G. JACOBSEN & U. ZOPPI

collections had already been sealed between two layers of glass. Given the fragile condition of the manuscripts, the reopening of these frames would certainly result in the dislodging of fragments and possibly even the destruction of the manuscript due to the build-up of static electricity. It was therefore not possible for the main manuscript fragments to be tested. This is unfortunate as ideaIly samples should be taken from manuscripts containing identified texts which are extensive enough to permit a detailed study of their paleography. Apart from these glass containing manuscript fragments, the British Library and Senior Kharo~thi manuscript collections also include several boxes of loose debris material, some ofwmch can be securely linked to fully conserved fragments. This debris material in from of birch bark approximately I cm or more in length to mere powder. Some of these fragments were the byproduct of the conservation process, while others were found loose in the containers in which the manuscripts originally came to the British Library.

As the British Library manuscripts were not tested) no more will be said about them here, although it is hoped that it will be possible to radiocarbon date them in the future.

The first of the two Senior manuscript samples was taken from frame no. 6. This frame preserves one relatively large piece of blank bark in good condition and several smaller fragments originally belonging to it, which also lack writing. These probably originally formed a part of scron constituting its upper section, or, less likely, its bottom!4 As this frame contains no written material and as the bark fragments are solid and stable, the frame was opened and one 01 the small, loose fragments was removed. As with all samples collected for the tests documented here, the exact location from which this sample was taken was recorded.

For the second Senior sample, a small, clean fragment of bark was from the loose debris material associated with the manuscripts in the collection. It was not possible to identify the manuscript to which this fragment originally belonged. The choice of such material is not ideal as its source manuscript is unknown and there is a greater possibility that it includes contaminants, However, since the Senior manuscripts were all written by the same scribe and the collection represents a commission that was most likely written in a short period of time (see below), the bark of the separate manuscripts is likely to be of approximately the same age. Further, the results proved either that the fear of contamination was unfounded or the sample pretreatment was successful in removing contamination. These Senior samples were caIleeted by Mark Barnard, Head of Paper Conservation at the British Library.IS

In contrast to the Senior samples, which were birch bark, the three Schflyen samples tested were from palm leaf manuscripts. Also, unlike the Senior and British Library manuscripts, which are conserved between layers of glass, the Sch9Yen fragments are kept in plastic envelope sheets so that fragments can be easily removed. All three Schayen samples were blank areas of bark cut from fragments containing writing, preserving a different text written by separate scribes.

of these three texts have been identified. The three fragments are 1) MS 2179/4216 (ANSTO sample code OZI040): an unidentified text which was chosen

because of its peculiar and apparently late paleographic features;

14 A less likely possibility is that it to scron details will be in Anon (forthcoming b). l5 We would like to thank: the conservators and curators at the Library for their assistance in coneeting the Senior particularly, Mark Michael O'Keefe. and Barry Knight, We would also like to thank: Robert

for his pennission to test these manuscripts. The numbers were initially prefIXed by SC Sch0yen Collection), the convention adopted fur

BMSC voL This was changed to MS (= Martin Sch0yen) fur all subsequent publications.

RADIOCARBON

ANSTO

sanlple:s, rather than ANSTO

RADIOCARBON DATING

OZI040 MS 2179/42 1851:1:39

2179/65

16

and Reimer 1993. Robert the owner of the mallUS(~npj:s; MS Martin Sch£'fVen_

RADIOCARBON DATING

19 Salomon 1999: 106 for references.

JACOBSEN U.

1 + + rOlltanlrf!na mo.'$U1Haltr(lj.,utrBll!Q

RADIOCARBON

288 M. ALLON~ R SALOMON. G. JACOBSEN & U, ZOPPI

on a Gandharan reliquary (Salomon 1995: which has a date, in an unspecified era, recorded twice, first in words as ~'the year fifty-seven" (sarrzbatsara satapalllisa) and again in

as (1~100 .. 20-20-10 .. 4-1-1 .. 1). This shows that there was in fact at this point in Indian history a practice of writing dates with the hundreds unit deleted, something which had previously only been hypothesized on circumstantial grounds.

Moreover, Falk (2004: 173) has now convincingly argued that the Kani~ka era was still being used in inscriptions of the Gupta period, but with the hundreds unit deleted. Among inscriptions from the time of the KU~SJ:lasthemselves, there are several sculptures from Mathura bearing dates with what may be suspected to be omitted hundreds, as argued Lohuizen-de 1949: 249,

281, 289, 295, etc .. Among Ku~ar;ta inscriptions from Gandhara itself, the Ara inscription 01 the year 41 during the reign of Kani~ka [II], son of Vajhe~ka (Konow 1929: 162-165) is the most important example of a suspected omitted hundreds date.

In view of these examples, we cannot absolutely rule out the possibility that the [Kani~ka] year 12 on the Senior pot is an omitted hundreds date, that is, that it stands for the year 112 in abbreviated form. But this is, at best, an unlikely alternative. For one thing, the attestation of omitted hundreds in Ku~ar;ta materials from G~mdhara is sparse and uncertain. Moreover, the script, language~ and format of the Senior pot inscription are fully consistent with records of the time ofKani~ka I, that is (most likely), the first half of the second century A.D., and are not likely to date to the late second century A.D. The same, moreover, is the case for the language and script of the Senior manuscripts themselves, which show none of the typical features of Gandhari texts of the later period, such as sanskritized orthography, so that they are unlikely to date from a time after the reign ofKani~a 1.

conclusion, it is to take the date of the inscription on the Senior pot as representing the twelfth of the reign of Kani~ka I, and this must correspond to an absolute date between about A.D, 130-250, as detennined by the radiocarbon dating of the associated manuscripts. This virtually rules out the possibility Kani~ka's era being identical to the Saka era of A.D. 71-78, and is consistent with, though it does not prove, Falk's proposed date of A.D, 127 for the epoch of the Kani~ka era~

3.2 The Scheyen samples 3.2.1 text (MS =MS The text of this fragment remains unidentified. It appears to consist mostly of phrases and topics common to agama texts and commentaries. It may be a commentary on a sutra or an abhidharma text that utilizes canonical quotes. It also has elements in cornmon with the Pali Pelakopadesa and Nettipakara1)a. Examples are the following:

i) . trini trini satavo III (a3-4), where paripurimi = P paripUriini ufulfilIed" andsatavodhyaghaparipureti is the equivalent of P satta found in a sutta passage that parallels the Gandhari in structure: ... indriyasulllvaro tilJi sucaritiini paripii.riini cattliro satipauhiine saUa OOj,/IUmj2ra nnl",pnl'irl'J vijjiivimuttiJ!'l paripUrentit evam etissii vijjiivimutti'yii evan ca niir'imJri

115; SN V The underlined portion may translated "the four establishments 01 mindfulness being fullfilled, they fulfill the seven enlightenment factors." The topic of this AN

&U.

RADIOCARBON DATING

~CI110Vein, Hira)rama. and Ha,rastJl1<le:rR collections will

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