Aśvaghoṣa in the Schøyen Collection: Fragments of the Sūtrālaṃkāra in the Kuṣāṇa-Brāhmī Manuscript

Abstract

It has been over 20 years since the commencement of efforts to decipher the Buddhist manuscripts from the Bāmiyān Valley, Afghanistan, now housed in the Schøyen Collection in Norway. Recently, within this collection, numerous fragments belonging to what appears to be the same palm-leaf manuscript of the Sūtrālaṃkāra, attributed to Aśvaghoṣa, have been discovered. The Sūtrālaṃkāra is a poetic work in kāvya style that provides commentary on the Buddhist Āgama scriptures, long lost to history. This manuscript is an ancient copy written in the Kuṣāṇa-Brāhmī script, dating back to the late 2nd or 3rd century CE, not too distant from Aśvaghoṣa’s time. This discovery was made possible when, four years ago, I began deciphering the Tridaṇḍamālā, which appeared to contain verses borrowed from the Sūtrālaṃkāra, and found correspondences with multiple verses written in the Bāmiyān manuscript. This paper provides an interim report on the discovery’s background, its contents, and the essence of the Sūtrālaṃkāra, which can be considered Aśvaghoṣa’s seminal poetic work.