IOL Khot S 46

Description

Scope and content : The scroll was copied in Dunhuang in the mid 10th century for a Buddhist patron Śāṃ Khīṅä Hvāṃ’ Saṃgakä who, in return, requested long life for himself and his family. The scroll is dated in four colophons written over a period of six months in the year of the Hare (AD 943) and includes Buddhist esoteric Mahāyāna and Tantric works written in Sanskrit and Khotanese. The first two are Sanskrit dhāraṇīs (incantations): Buddhoṣṇīṣa-vijaya and Sitātapatra (ll. 1-198), and these are followed by further texts in Khotanese: Bhadrakalpika-sūtra, a list of the names of the Buddha (ll.199-754); two almost identical deśanā (confession) texts on the same subject (ll. 755-851 and 1062-1101); and the Mahāyāna Sumukha-sūtra (ll. 852-1061), in which the Bodhisattva Vajrapāṇi and several other deities promise to protect anyone who recites and learns the sūtra. (http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/asian-and-african/2013/06/a-buddhist-sutra-and-illustrated-cover.html). The silk was originally pasted to verso of scroll forming a cover. In Zwalf 1985: 84.