Gilgit Manuscripts, Volume III, Part 2 (An Old and Rare Book: Only 1 Quantity Available)

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Introduction The discovery of the mansucript of the Vinaya-vastu of the Mülasarvāstivāda Vinaya Pitaka was announced by Prof. Sylvain Lévi in the Journal Asiatique, vol. ccxx (1932) and by myself in the Indian Historical Quarterly, vol. xiv (1938). The ms. is written on birchbark in Gupta characters of the sixth century A.D. and is of the same type as are most of the mss. discovered by Sir Aurel Stein and other explorers in Eastern Turkestan and Central Asia. The leaves of the ms. are very large in size being about 23½" long and 5" broad as will be apparent from the enclosed plate: There are ten lines in each page. The ms. reached our hands with several gaps. The leaves were in a confused state. These have been arranged partly by the available leaf marks and partly with the help of the Tibetan version. The work is an extensive one, covering 423 leaves (vide reproduction of the last leaf in the plate). Each leaf covers about 4 pages in print (as in the present edition), and so if all the leaves could be found, the work would have covered about 1700 pages in print. In Tibetan, this work extends over four volumes covering (407+563+478+470) 1918 leaves.