Four avadanas from the Gilgit manuscripts

Abstract

The present work is a study of the avadanas preserved in the Gilgit Manuscripts which are supposed to be of the 5th-6th century A.D. In chapter I of the introduction I have classified these Gilgit avadanas as belonging to the earliest stage in the history of Avadana literature, when an attempt was made, to compile an avadana collection by selecting materials from Vinaya literature. In the following chapters a brief account of four avadanas and their manuscripts is given. The edition of these four avadanas with annotations is the main part of this work. There I have attempted to establish a text of the Gilgit recension. All remarkable words or phrases are discussed in the footnotes to the Sanskrit texts, because without any comprehensive understanding of the relevant word we cannot establish even one syllable of that word. At the same time I have noted the results of comparisons with the other Sanskrit recensions, and the Tibetan and Chinese translations, which indicate well the closeness of the Gilgit text to the Tibetan translation. The editions of the parallal Tibetan texts which must be consulted in order to establish the Sanskrit texts are given in the following section. Appendices I-IV contain notes which are too long to put into the footnotes to the Sanskrit text. The last part is an Index, arranged in Sanskrit alphabetical order, of the terms which are discussed in the footnotes to the Sanskrit texts. Show more