Perfection of Wisdom - the 1,000-year-old Sanskrit Buddhist manuscript
One of the greatest treasures of Cambridge University
Library is a Buddhist manuscript that was produced in Kathmandu exactly 1,000
years ago. The exquisitely-illustrated Perfection of Wisdom is still revealing
fresh secrets.
One thousand years ago, a scribe called Sujātabhadra put his
name to a manuscript known as the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight-Thousand
Stanzas (Skt. Aṣṭasahāsrikā Prajñāparamitā). Sujātabhadra was a skilled
craftsman working in or around Kathmandu – a city that has been one of the hubs
of the Buddhist world from around 500 CE right up until the present day. The
Perfection of Wisdom in Eight-Thousand Stanzas is written in Sanskrit, one the
of the world’s most ancient languages, using both sides of 222 oblong sheets
made from palm leaf (the first missing sheet has been replaced with a paper
sheet). Each leaf is punctured by a pair of neat holes, a reminder that
the palm leaf pages were originally bound together with cords passing through
these holes. The entire palm leaf manuscript is held between richly
ornate wooden covers.
Today the fabulous manuscript that would have taken
Sujātabhadra and fellow craftsman many months — perhaps even a year — to
complete is held by the Manuscripts Room at Cambridge University Library. Over
the past 140 years, it has been studied by some of the foremost specialists of
the medieval Buddhist world. A digitisation project has now made the
manuscript accessible online to scholars worldwide and has revealed fresh
evidence about the origins of some of the earliest Buddhist texts.
The presence of the Perfection of Wisdom, safe in the
temperature-controlled environment of one of the world’s greatest libraries,
many thousands of miles from its birthplace, is especially poignant at a time
when the people of Nepal are struggling to survive in the aftermath of a
devastating earthquake. Buddhist texts are more than scriptures: they are sacred
objects in themselves. Many manuscripts were used as protective amulets and
installed in shrines and altars in the home of Buddhist followers. Examples
include numerous manuscripts of the Five Protections (Skt. Pañcarakṣā), a
corpus of scriptures that includes spells, enumerations of benefits and ritual
instructions for use, particularly sacred in Nepal.
Manuscripts produced in Nepal, Tibet and Central Asia during
the period from the 5th until the 19th century are evidence of the thriving
‘cult of the book’ that was the subject of a recent exhibition at Cambridge
University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The Perfection of Wisdom is
also an important historical document that provides valuable information about
the dynastic history of medieval Nepal. Its textual content and illustrations,
and the skills and materials that went into its production, reveal the ways in
which Nepal was one of the most important hubs within a Buddhist world that
spanned from Sri Lanka to China.
The text is lavishly illustrated by a total of 85 miniature
paintings: each one is an exquisite representation of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas
(beings who resolve to achieve Buddhahood in order to help other sentient
beings) – including the historical Buddha Śākyamuni and Maitreya, the Buddha of
the Future. The figures represented in the miniatures include also the embodied
Perfection of Wisdom goddess (Prajñāparamitā) herself on the Vulture Peak
Mountain near Rājagṛha, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Māgadha, in
today’s Bihar state. The settings in which these deities are depicted are drawn
in meticulous detail. The Bodhisattva Lokanātha, surrounded by White and Green
Tārās, is shown in front of the Svayambhu stupa in Kathmandu – a shrine sacred
for Nepalese and Tibetan Buddhists, damaged in the recent earthquake. The
places depicted in the miniatures represent a kind of map of Buddhist lands and
sacred sites, from Sri Lanka to Indonesia and from South India to China.
The Perfection of Wisdom is one of the world’s oldest
illuminated Buddhist manuscripts and the second oldest illuminated manuscript
in Cambridge University Library. Its survival – and its passage through time
and space – is little short of miraculous. Without the efforts of a certain
Karunavajra, quite probably a Buddhist lay believer, it would have been
destroyed in 1138 — in that period the governors challenged the king in a
struggle for power over the Kathmandu Valley. “We know that Karunavajra
saved the manuscript because he added a note in verse form,” said Dr Camillo
Formigatti of the Sanskrit Manuscripts Project. “He states that he rescued the
‘Perfection of Wisdom, incomparable Mother of the Omniscient’ from falling into
the hands of unbelievers who were most probably people of Brahmanical
affiliation.”
Cambridge University Library acquired the manuscript in
1876. It was purchased for the Library by Dr Daniel Wright, a civil servant
working for the British government in Kathmandu. “From the second half of the
19th century, western institutions were hugely interested in the orient - and
museums and libraries were busy building collections of everything eastern,”
said Dr Hildegard Diemberger of the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit.
“Colonial administrators were almost literally given ‘shopping lists’ of manuscripts
to acquire in the course of their travels.” Scholars are able to pinpoint with
remarkable precision the date that Sujātabhadra recorded his name as scribe in
the ‘colophon’ (details about the publication of a book).
“Using tables that convert the dates used by Nepalese
scribes into the calendar we use today, we can see that Sujātabhadra added his
name and the place where he completed the manuscript on 31 March, 1015. The
study of mathematics, astrology and astronomy were central aspects of ancient
and medieval South Asian culture, and time reckoning was very accurate — both
the lunar and the solar calendar were employed,” said Formigatti. A thousand
years on from its production, the manuscript is still yielding secrets. In the
course of digitising the manuscript in 2014, Formigatti identified 12 of the
final verses to be the only surviving witness of the Sanskrit original of the
Ripening of the Victory Banner (Skt. Vajradhvajapariṇāmanā), a short hymn
hitherto considered to have survived only in its Tibetan translation.
The
popularity of this hymn is borne out by the fact that the Tibetan version of
the text is also found in manuscript fragments found in Dunhuang, a city-state
along the Silk Route in China. The production of this precious manuscript is
evidence not only of the thriving communication channels that existed across
the 11th century Buddhist world but also of a well-established network of trade
routes.
The leaves used to make the writing surface came from palm
trees. Palms do not flourish in the dry climate of Nepal: it’s thought that
palm leaves would have come from North East India. “The University Library’s
manuscript of Perfection of Wisdom shows us that ten centuries ago Nepal, which
westerners often perceive as ‘remote’ and ‘isolated’, had flourishing
connections stretching many thousands of miles,” said Formigatti. “When
Sujātabhadra picked up his reed pen and put his name to the manuscript, he was
part of a rich network of scholarship, culture, belief and trade. Buddhist
manuscripts and texts travelled huge distances.
From the fertile
plains of Northern India, they crossed the Himalayan range through Nepal and
Tibet, reaching the barren landscapes of Central Asia and the city-states along
the Silk Route in China, finally arriving in Japan. “The Perfection of Wisdom
is perhaps the most representative textual witness of the Buddhist cult of the
book, and this manuscript written, decorated and worshipped in 11th century
Nepal, is one of the finest specimens of Buddhist book culture still extant.”
