Notes on the Khotanese Saṅghāṭasūtra

Extract

The Saṅghāṭasūtra (Sgh) is one of the most extensively preserved Old Khotanese texts, together with the Book of Zambasta (Z) and the Suvarṇabhāsasūtra (Suv).¹ Unlike Z which is known chiefly from one manuscript and only a few fragmentary variants from other manuscripts, the Sgh is represented by a large number of fragments belonging to several manuscripts. We now have Giotto Canevascini to thank for the publication of virtually all the extant manuscript material belonging to the Khotanese Sgh, originally the author's doctoral dissertation prepared under the supervision of R. E. Emmerick and submitted in 1992 at the University of Hamburg.² It constitutes a major contribution to Khotanese research and to Iranian and Buddhist studies as well: it is of note, for instance, that Canevascini could demonstrate that the oldest manuscript of Sgh already contains textual corruptions revealing that it is actually a copy from a still older manuscript (p. xv), and that his chronological arrangement of the manuscripts provides definitive evidence that the spellings g, ś and ṣ precede, in Old Khotanese, the spellings gg, śś and ṣṣ (pp. xv–xvi) as suggested by E. Leumann, Buddhistische Literatur, nordarisch und deutsch, I. Teil, Nebenstücke (Leipzig, 1920), 92 (cf. Ṡgs., xix).