CHAP. xxVII.] TIBETAN MANUSCRIPTS 417
middle, and then proceeded to deposit the 'halved leaves all round the cella.
The careful examination since made of these disjecta membra by Mr. D. L. Barnett, of the British Museum, has proved that they belonged to an early Tibetan version of the Salistamba-sutra, a Buddhist treatise on philosophy, the Sanskrit original of which is known only from quotations. The great importance of the Tibetan text, of which about one-half has thus been recovered, has been lucidly discussed by Mr. Barnett in his " Preliminary Notice " of these discoveries published in the Royal Asiatic Society's Journal for 1903. Here it can be indicated only in the briefest outlines. The exceptional interest of the fragments rests not merely on the
HALF-LEAF OF TIBETAN MS. ON PAPER, FROM ENDERE TEMPLE (E. I. 32). (Scale three-eighths.)
fact that they supply a valuable criterion for the comparatively modern version of the same text embodied in the Kanjur, and thus for the critical analysis of this great canon of Tibetan Buddhist literature. Being the oldest known specimens of Tibetan writing, they furnish a wealth of fresh material for the study of Tibetan paleography and orthoepy. But still greater value must be claimed for them on account of the historical significance with which the place and circumstances of their discovery invest them.
There can be no doubt as to the political conditions with which we must connect the finds of Tibetan texts in this ruined temple, as well as the appearance of Tibetan graffiti that I found covering its stuccoed walls in several places. We know from the Chinese annals
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IIIFカラー高解像度
