Story of Gilgit Manuscripts

In the year 1931, several Buddhist Sanskrit manuscripts were discovered at Naupur village some two miles west of Gilgit in a circular chamber of Buddhist stupa which was filled by hundreds of votives and a mass of ancient manuscripts packed in wooden boxes, commonly found in Buddhist ruins of Central Asia. This was an epoch-making archaeological discovery in Gilgit, the country of the Dards and the seat of the later Sahi rulers, the name of the ruler being very likely Srideva Sahi Surendra Vikramaditya Nanda, whose queens were Samdevi Trailokyadevi and Vihali. One of the manuscripts is the gift of this king while there are several others given away by the local devotees like Sulkhma, Suli vajra, Mamtoti, Mangalasura, Aryadevendrahuta. The scribe of the king's manuscipts is Aryasthu-abuddhi and the collaborator Narendra Datta.

The discovery of the manuscripts was first announced by Sir Aurel Stein in the Statesman of the 24th July, 1931. He reported that some boys watching flocks above Naupur village, about two miles west of Gilgit Cantonment, were said to have cleared piece of timber sticking out on the top of a small stone-covered mound. Further digging laid bare a circular chamber within the ruins of a Buddhist stupa filled with hundreds of small votive stupas and relief plaques common in Central Asia and Tibet. In the course of the excavation a great mass of ancient manuscripts came to light closely packed in what appears to have been a wooden box. The paleographic indications of some of the manuscripts suggest that they may date back to the sixth century A.D. M. Hacktn also paid a visit to the spot and furnished us with the following information {Journal Asiatique, 1932, pp. I4 -I5): The place of discovery is situated about 2 miles to the north of Gilgit in the mountainous region.
There are four stupas with square basements placed side by side, thus:

South North
The hemispherical domes of the stupas A and B were well preserved and it was the third stupa C which had yielded the manuscripts. This stupa C had double basements, the lower of which measures 6 metres 60 cm. on each side and the next receding about 60 cm. on all the four sides. The height of this stupa is 12 to 15 metres. The diameter of the chamber containing the manuscripts is 2 metres 40 cms. In the centre of the chamber there were the five wooden boxes, the fifth containing the other four in which were kept all the manuscripts.

The Wazir of Gilgit took charge of the manuscripts but, before he could bring them into his custody, a substantial portion of the manuscripts and all the painted covers had passed into the hands of adventurers. He got the manuscripts in bundles of jumbled up leaves with several lost or damaged. By the order of His Highness the Maharaja of Kashmir, the Wazir sent them to Srinagar. His Highness the Maharaja, a keen lover and patron of culture, realised the value of the manuscripts and decided to have them published, and entrusted the care of the treasures to the then Prime Minister. Our deep gratitude to the then His Highness the Maharaja of Jammu & Kashmir for entrusting the responsibility of editing the manuscripts and sanctioning the whole cost of publication, and for his liberality in the cause of the propagation of Buddhist culture. The treasures remained locked up for six or seven years in the Government Records Department till the assumption of office of the Prime Minister by Dewan Bahadur Gopalaswami Ayyangar, a man with determination and a definite policy. At the instance of his Chief Secretary, Mr. R. C. Kak, a life-long archaeologist and a student of Sanskrit culture, he requested Shri Nalinaksha Dutt during 1938 year to take up the work of editing the manuscripts for the Jammu & Kashmir Durbar.
In 1938, Pandit Madhusudan Kaul was deputed by the Kashmir Government to carry on further excavations at the site but he could not discover anything of importance in stupa A, B, and D but he found 3 or 4 more manuscripts in stupa C. The script used in the manuscripts is mostly Upright Gupta of a date little later than those used in the manuscripts-remains found in Eastern Turkestan and similar to the script found in the Bower manuscripts. The script of the Bower manuscripts is assigned to the 6th century A.C., and so the Gilgit manuscripts may also be dated in the 6th or at the latest in the 7th century A.C. This date takes us to the reign of kings preceding.
The Gilgit manuscripts with painted covers present substantial parts of the original canon of Buddhism and as such carry great importance for understanding the literature, philosophy, religion and art of China, Manchuria and other areas of Central Asia. Out of total excavated manuscripts numbering above 1800, two are on display in the museum of Centre of Central Asian Studies in Kashmir University and bear earliest paintings of this kind in India.

The manuscripts were written in the 5th or 6th century A. C. and as such they are some of the earliest so far discovered in India, similar to the Bower manuscripts and to those discovered in Central Asia and Eastern Turkestan. Most of the manuscripts were known to us only through their Chinese and Tibetan translations and no one dreamt of the discovery of their Sanskrit originals. It is a peculiar fate of the Buddhist works that not a single manuscript could be discovered in India except that of the Manjusrimulakalpa ( published in 1930's in Trivandrum Sanskrit Series). The manuscripts have come so far either from Ceylon, Nepal, or Tibet and their translations from Burma, Ceylon, China, Japan, Tibet and Mongolia, so we may say that the Gilgit manuscripts were the only Buddhist manuscripts discovered in India.
An interesting fact relating to the findspot of the manuscripts is that they were deposited within the vault of a stupa. This is not a singular instance, for in Central Asia and Eastern Turkistan also, manuscripts have been found deposited in the stupas. In more than one manuscript, the name and gotra of the donor of the manuscripts appear in the body of the mantra in place of "such and such person of such and such gotra" of the Chinese and Tibetan versions. The practice of mentioning the name and gotra of the sacrificer is common in Brahmanic mantras. This leads us to the inference that the manuscripts were specially prepared for a certain ritualistic purpose and after the performance of that rituals, the manuscripts, sacred as they were, were placed in a stupa. But this explanation cannot be applied to the texts which were not meant for any ritual, e.g., the sutras, avadajias, vyakaranas, etc. The only plausible explanation that we can offer is that well-to-do persons seeking merit by propagating the dharmasastras, as enjoined in the Buddhist texts had the sacred texts copied out for them and deposited in a sacred place like the stupa. This also accounts for the names of the donor his relatives and friends appearing m the colophons of some of the manuscripts.

Another characteristic feature of the manuscripts, which should be pointed out, is the writing of two or more manuscripts in one bundle of leaves with running pagination and without any space being left between the end of one text and the beginning of another. The same characteristic is found also in the Tibetan xylographs. In view of the agreement of the manuscripts and the xylographs in regard to this feature, it may be inferred that the Tibetans very likely adhered to the divisions of volumes as adopted by the Indian writers of the originals.

It will be observed that the kings, queens and ministers of Kashmir commencing from Meghavahana patronised Buddhism more than any other faith, and a large number of viharas was built at this time. After a short period, the Chinese travellers visited the country. The manuscripts copied for Yuan Chwang were therefore, of the same time as our Manuscripts and it is noteworthy that the Gupta scripts preserved by the Chinese for transcribing the Sanskrit in their Chinese translations are similar to those found in the Gilgit manuscripts

Of the above Manuscripts lying in the personal library of Maharaja in Rajgarh Palaces in Srinagar 62 in numbers were dispatched to National Archives of India in 1948.The physical condition of the Manuscripts which are mostly written on birch bark is good and the list of the same is also available in National Archives of India, New Delhi.