Literary History of Sanskrit Buddhism

15
Chapter 2: Sanskrit Buddhist Canon
Of this Sanskrit canon no complete copy is to be found. We know it
only from larger or smaller fragments of its Udānavarga,
Dharmapada, Ekottarāgama and Madhyamāgama which have been
discovered from the xylographs and manuscripts recovered from
Eastern Turkistan by Stein, Grünwedel and Le Coq, as well as from
quotations in other Buddhist Sanskrit texts like the Mahāvastu,
Divyāvadāna and Lalitavistara and finally from Chinese and Tibetan
translations.
The literature of Central Asian discoveries has already assumed
great proportions. The more important references are: Pischel,
Fragments of a Sanskrit Canon of the Buddhist from Idykutsari in
Chinese Turkistan, Sitzungsberichte der Weiner Akadamie der
Wissenschaften 1904, p. 807. New Fragments, ibid p. 1138; The
Turfan Recensions of the Dhammapada, Sitzungsberichte der Weiner
Akadamie der Wissenschaften 1908, p. 968. What, however, Pischel
regarded as the recensions of the Dhammapada are in reality
fragments of the Udānavarga of Dharmatrāta, the Tibetan
translation of which has been rendered into English by Rockhill in
1883, and the Sanskrit original of which Luders is going to edit from
the Turfan finds. Vallée-Poussin has discovered fragments of the
same work in the collection brought from Central Asia by Stein and
there is found Udāna [verses] corresponding to [those in] the Pāḷi
Udāna (Journale Asiatique, 1912, p. 10, vol. xix, p. 311). Levi,
Journale Asiatique, 1910, p. 10 vol. xvi, p. 444. On the other hand the
ancient Kharoṣṭhī manuscript discovered in Khotan by Dutreuil de
Rheins, important equally from the standpoint of palaeography and