Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient, 103 (2017), p. 495-590 Comptes rendus

Shayne Clarke (éd.), Vinaya Texts, New Delhi, The National Archives of India / Tokyo, The International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University, 2014 (Gilgit Manuscripts in the National Archives of India, Facsimile Edition, Volume I), xiv + 80 pages, 277 planches – ISBN 978-4-904234-08-2. The history of the so-called Gilgit manuscripts has been told many times, though important details surrounding their discovery and subsequent fate remain unknown. Following and augmenting the outline given in the book under review (pp. xi– xiii), in 1931 two cowherds searching for firewood opened the ruin of a building at Naupur near Gilgit and brought to light a box containing numerous manuscripts on birch bark (cf. also Jettmar 1981, not in the bibliography of the present volume, and von Hinüber 1979, 2014). A new scholarly consensus appears to have formed that the building in question was not (as originally assumed) a stūpa, with alternative suggestions ranging from the living quarters of a small group of monks (Fussman 2004, accepted on p. xi and in von Hinüber 2014 : 79– 80 ) to a Buddhist scriptorium and ‘ genizah’ (Schopen 2009). The local government was soon alerted and took possession of some of the manuscripts. Soon after the discovery, Aurel Stein (returning from his last Central Asian expedition) and Joseph Hackin (as part of the Mission Citroën) passed through Gilgit and acquired some manuscript leaves that the villagers had retained (now kept in the British Library in London and in Paris – note Lévi 1932 : 16). In 1938, Madhusudan Koul carried out a more formal excavation of the Naupur building and brought to light further manuscripts on birch bark and one on palm leaf (now kept at the Central Asian Museum of the University of Srinagar). A third set of manuscript leaves from the Naupur building was acquired and photographed by Giuseppe Tucci in Rawalpindi in 1956, then given to the National Museum of Pakistan in Karachi (p. 29 fn. 68, cf. Sferra 2008 : 25, 29, 52, 73 ; 2009 : 267). The greater part of the Naupur finds reached the National Archives of India – and it is the material kept there that forms the primary subject matter of the present volume. In addition to the Delhi, London, Paris, Srinagar and Karachi folios, smaller parts of the Naupur finds are now preserved at the Scindia Oriental Research Institute of Vikram University in Ujjain, at the Heras Institute of St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai and in the private Yada collection in Tokyo. Today, eighty-seven years after the original discovery of these manuscripts, the majority of them are still not accessible in good photographic