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Mesheznikov Artiom V., Klementeva Tatiana V. Sanskrit Fragments of Hīnayāna Sūtras (SI 3332/20, SI 3333/1) in the Serindia Collection of the IOM RAS // Written Monuments of the Orient. Vol. 12, No. 1(24), 2026. P. 91—106. DOI: 10.55512/wmo695850
The article deals with two unpublished Sanskrit fragments of Hīnayāna sūtras (SI 3332/20, SI 3333/1) from Central Asia kept at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Serindia Collection, IOM RAS). The M.I. Lavrov’s subcollection of the Serindia Collection contains 18 Sanskrit fragments (under the pressmarks SI 3332/2, SI 3332/12–24, SI 3333/1–2, SI 3334 and SI 3335), which academician S.F. Oldenburg (1863–1934) identified with the help of the Pāli Canon as “Cakravartisūtra” (Pāli: “Cakkavatti-sīhanāda-sutta”) and “Payasvī-sūtra” (Pāli: “Pāyāsi-sutta”). Apparently, S.F. Oldenburg intended to publish them, since the Serindia Collection holds his partial transliterations (several lines) of the fragments, but for some reason he was unable to carry out his plan and to introduce into scientific circulation these unique manuscripts containing rare Sanskrit examples of Hīnayāna sūtras. One of these sūtras (i.e. “Payasvī”), to our knowledge, is not represented in any other Sanskrit manuscript collection. The two fragments under study come from the Kucha oasis city-state of the Tarim Basin, are written in the North Turkestan Brāhmī script on paper, and can be conventionally dated to the 8th–9th cc. Based on their external features and content analysis, we found out that these fragments form two almost conjoining parts of a single folio, which contains the final part of “Cakravarti-sūtra” and the opening lines of “Payasvī-sūtra”. The article offers a description of the fragments, transliteration, comparison with Pāli and Chinese versions of the sūtras, translation and facsimile reproduction. PDF-files
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Keywords
Buddhist canons
Hīnayāna
manuscripts
Sanskrit
Sergei F. Oldenburg
Serindia Collection
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