Catalogue of the Buddhist Sanskrit manuscripts in the University library, Cambridge : with introductory notices and illustrations of the palæography and chronology of Nepal and Bengal / by Cecil Bendall.

  • Cambridge University Library
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Catalogue of the Buddhist Sanskrit manuscripts in the University library, Cambridge : with introductory notices and illustrations of the palæography and chronology of Nepal and Bengal / by Cecil Bendall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    • • collection consists in the names of kings given, in so many cases, along with the carefulty and minutely expressed dates of writing. To draw out more or less in detail and to tabulate the chronological information thus derived, formed the chief scope of my contribution to the International Congress of Orientalists at Berlin, 1881. Much of what follows will there¬ fore necessarily be a repetition of remarks made on that occasion. Keeping in view the double local origin of our collection, the subject of History, like that of Palaeography, falls into two main divisions, relating respectively to Bengal and Nepal. In this place it will be best to treat first of the MSS. written in Bengal, as the subject is shorter, simpler, and perhaps of more general interest, than the history of Nepal itself. The five earliest of our Bengal MSS. belong to the Pala dynasty, on which see General Cunningham’s “Archaeological Survey,” III. 134; some criticisms, etc., by Dr Rajendralala Mitra in the Bengal Asiatic Society’s Journal, xlvii. 385, and the rejoinder by General Cunningham in the “Survey,” XI. 177. These MSS., like the inscriptions of the same place and time, but unlike our MSS. written in Nepal itself, are dated not by years of any era, but by the year of the reigning monarch *. By a somewhat fortunate accident, four of these five MSS. fall in the two reigns of which we possess dated inscriptions, cited of course by the authors above named. We arrange them as follows. Add. 1464, circa A.D. 1020. The MS. is dated in the 5th year of Mahlpala, whom we find from the Sarnath inscription reigning A.D. 1026. Cunningham places his accession c. 1015 (“Survey,” 11. cc.). * It was the difference of usage in this respect between the two divisions of our collection,—divisions which were not recognized by any of those who first examined these MSS.,—that gave rise to some erroneously early dates in the first rough printed list (“History of Nepal,” p. 321, 11. 5—8, etc.).
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