Chinese-Sanskrit manuscript fragments (SI 4819, SI 4948) in the Serindia Collection (Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences)

Abstract

The article presents an overview of the results of joint work on Sanskrit fragments written on the reverse side of Chinese manuscripts kept in the collection of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IOM RAS). Two previously unstudied Chinese-Sanskrit fragments of various Buddhist texts have been identified within the Saint Petersburg collection of written monuments from Central Asia — the Serindia Collection of the IOM RAS (6788 storage units). In the Serindia Collection such fragments are very rare: about 20 such units have been identified to date. The fragments published in this paper belong to different subcollections of the Serindia Collection and are stored under the pressmarks SI 4819 (collection of S. F. Oldenburg) and SI 4948 (collection of N. N. Krotkov). Judging by the graphic variations of the script in the Sanskrit texts, it can be assumed that the manuscripts were copied in the northern oases of Serindia (present-day Xinjiang, China) and date back to the 8th–10th cc. AD. The introduction of this extremely valuable segment of the IOM RAS collection into scholarly circulation will make it possible to move forward in reconstructing the cultural and historical context of the spread of Northern Buddhism to Central Asia in the Early Middle Ages. The article includes a codicological description, a textual analysis, a translation into Russian, and a facsimile reproduction of the fragments under study.