On the Bodhicaryāvatārapañjikā at the Asiatic Society of Bengal

There are three manuscripts of Prajñākaramati’s Bodhicaryāvatāra-pañjikā listed in the Descriptive Catalogue of Sanscrit Manuscripts in the Government Collection of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal of 1917 [1], cf. pp. 49 seq.:

• “49. 3830. bodhicaryyāvatāra pañjikā. [...] Substance, palm-leaf. Character: Newari. Date, N.S. 198 = 1078 A.D. In good state of preservation. With the first leaf and 26 others missing. Colophon: – bodhicaryyāvatāre prajñāpāramitāparicchedaṭīkā samāptā | …”
• “50. 9979. bodhicaryyāvatāra. Bodhicaryāvatāra and the Pañjikā commentary. [...] Four seasoned palm-leaves. 20 x 2. Written in old Newari Character. I. Bodhicaryāvatāra with six lines on a page, faded, containing the colophon: – bodhicaryyāvatāre dhyānapāramitā ‘ṣṭamaḥ paricchedaḥ | …”
• “51. 3829. bodhicaryāvatāraṭīkā. [...] Substance, palm-leaf, 12 x 2 inches. Folio, 109. Lines, 6 on a page. Extend in slokas, 2725. Character, Bengali of the 12th century. Appearance, fresh but worm-eaten in places. Complete. Written in a neat and small hand. Colophon: bodhicaryyāvatāre prajñāpāramitāparicchedaṭīkā samāptā | …”

But I think the entries could be more precise. Considering the colophon line it seems that item no. 49 is another manuscript of the ninth chapter of Prajñākaramati’s commentary which seems to be transmitted independently carrying the title Bca-ṭīkā just like item no. 51 (Vaidya claims that the Ṭīkā was composed before as an independent text, cf. [2], p. ix. This is a tempting theory because it would explain why Prajñākaramati doesn’t commented on the tenth chapter of the Bca). So therefore there were resp. there are two witnesses of the commentary on the ninth chapter – the Ṭīkā, and one manuscript of chapters 1-8. The lacunae in La Vallée Poussin’s original edition ([3], 3,22-4,45 & 8,109-186 [end of 8th chapter]) also suggest that there wasn’t another text instance.

In the eleventh volume of the Notices on Sanskrit manuscripts [4] Haraprasāda Śāstrī reports in 1895 about two manuscripts of Prajñākaramati’s commentary that he has aquired that time (p. 7). He writes that one Nepalese item carries the whole text and another Maithilī manuscript carries the ninth chapter only (the confusion between Maithilī and Bengalī suggest that the script of this manuscript is Old Bengalī which Roth called “Proto-Bengali-Cum-Proto-Maithili”, cf. [5], pp. 32 seq.). The Nepalese manuscript he had described in the same way before in his article On a new find of old Nepalese manuscripts [6], and it is stated in the catalogue that the record was taken from this article because the piece was still borrowed away to La Vallée Poussin.

The information on the regarded material given by La Vallée Poussin in both editions, the one of the whole text and also his previous edition of the Ṭīkā of 1889 ([7], p. 233), is very meagre, but in both works he points to Haraprasāda Śāstri’s Notices concerning the regarded material. So my solution for this puzzle would be to assume that what is no. 50 in the catalogue was bundled together with no. 49 the time it was discovered and separated later, and so is recognized for carrying the whole text of Prajñākaramati’s commentary. That would also mean that the script of both pieces not differs significant.

By the way, the item numbers of the pieces (9979 in comparison with 3829 and 3830) are in line with that. Funny: the line iti prajñākaramativiracitāyāṃ bodhicaryāvatārapañjikāyāṃ prajñāpāramitāparicchedo navamaḥ in Vaidya’s edition ([2], p.282) couldn’t be found nowhere in the manuscripts – shame, shame shame!

References

[1] Hara Prasad Shāstri (Comp.): A descriptive catalogue of Sanscrit manuscripts under the care of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. 1: Buddhist manusripts. Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press 1917

[2] P[araśurām] L[akṣman] Vaidya (Ed.): Bodhicaryāvatāra of Śāntideva with the commentary Pañjikā of Prajñākaramati. Bombay: Mithila Institute of Post-Graduate Studies and Research in Sanskrit Learning Darbhanga 1960 (Buddhist Sanskrit Texts 12)

[3] Louis de La Vallée Poussin (Ed.): Bodhicaryāvatārapañjikā. Prajñākaramati’s commentary on the Bodhicaryāvatāra of Çāntideva. Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press 1901-14 (Bibliotheca Indica 150, fasc. 983, 1031, 1090, 1126, 1139, 1305, 1399)

[4] Haraprasád Sástri: Notices of Sanskrit mss 11. Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press 1895

[5] Dragomir Dimitrov: Tables of Old Bengali script. In: D.Dimitrov, U.Roesler, R.Steiner (Eds.): Indian and Tibetan Studies. Wien 2002 (Wiener Studien 53), pp. 27-78

[6] Hara Prasád Shástri: On a new find of old Nepalese manuscripts. In: Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Part 3: Anthropology 3 (1893), pp. 245-49

[7] Louis de La Vallée Poussin (Ed.): Bouddhisme. Études et Matériaux. Ādikarmapradīpa. Bodhicaryāvatāraṭīkā. London: Luzac & Co. 1898 [Bca-ṭīkā pp. 233-388]