Bower Manuscript - The Manuscript

The Manuscript

The term 'Bower Manuscript' is not strictly correct, since it is, as to size, a combination of two manuscripts, a larger and a smaller. The larger manuscript is a complex of six smaller manuscripts which are separately paginated. The Bower Manuscript is therefore, in reality, a collection of seven distinct manuscripts, indicated as parts I to VII in Hoernle's edition.

The manuscript is written on fifty-one birch bark leaves of an oblong shape, in the form of those of an Indian pothī. The birch bark of the large portion of the manuscript is of a quality much inferior to that of the smaller portion. The hole for the passage of the binding string is placed about the middle of the left half of the leaves. This placement of the string hole and the oblong form of the leaves point to an imitation of palm leaf pothīs from Southern India by the scribes of Kucā. The seven parts of the manuscript are written in an essentially identical script, the Gupta script, which prevailed in Northern India from the fourth to the sixth centuries A.D. Some graphic peculiarities of the Bower MS indicate, according to Hoernle, that it was written at some time within the fourth century A.D. Distinctive characters of the script used enabled Hoernle to distinguish four different scribes, who wrote parts I-III, part IV, parts V and VII, and part VI respectively. He also arrived at the conclusion that the writers of parts I-III and V-VII were natives of India who had migrated to Kucā. To judge from the style of writing, the scribe of parts I - III originally came from the northern, the two scribes of parts V-VII from the southern part of the northern area of the Indian Gupta script. The writer of part IV may have been a native of Eastern Turkestan. All four writers must have been Buddhist monks, residing in a monastery near Kucā. The ultimate owner of the whole series of manuscripts, whose name appears to have been Yaśomitra, must have held a prominent position in that monastery, for the bundle of manuscripts was contained in the relic chamber of the memorial stūpa built in his honour.