Ricerc@Sapienza

The Khotanese word Zambasta 17.14 ba??ä means ‘monsoon rains’, not ‘torrents’, and is a loanword from Gandhari going ultimately back to Sanskrit var?a? ‘rain(y season); year’. Recognition that the Khotanese word occurring in Suvar?a­bh?sottamas?tra 10.40 and so far read bihare in manuscript Or. 59 and ]?hare in manuscript Q should actually be read biha?e ‘dwells’, a loanword ultimately from Sanskrit viharati allows a more accurate translation of the passage.

T III S 16 is a complete folio that contains vv. 9-16 of chap. 13 of The book of Zambasta (= Z), an Old Khotanese poem on Mahayana Buddhism commonly believed to have been composed not earlier than the seventh century. The very existence of T III S 16 shows that this is not the case, since this folio should be dated to the fifth or early sixth century on account of the Early Turkestan Brahmi type b used in it. Thus, Z is contemporary with, or even precedes, the oldest known Khotanese translations of Buddhist s?tras.

Verse 2.139 of the long studied fifth-century Old Khotanese Buddhist poem known as the Book of Zambasta contains three hapax legomena. Two of them have been misinterpreted so far. Identification of the verse as a saying of wisdom with close parallels in other Buddhist works in Pāli and Sanskrit, as well as in Hindu and Jaina literature, allows its better interpretation and recognition of jūṣḍānā‑ as the Khotanese word for ‘(grain) musk’.