The Suśruta Project

The textual and cultural history of medicine in South Asia based on newly-discovered manuscript evidence

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Category: Textual notes

For philological notes referring to the manuscript text of the Suśrutasaṃhitā.

Scribal uncertainty about Dhanvantari

Posted on September 26, 2023September 26, 2023 by Dominik Wujastyk

We have written before about the role of Dhanvantari in the Ayurvedic medical tradition transmitted in the Suśrutasaṃhitā (; ) Through the kind offices of Punjab University Library (PUL) and Mr Tancredi Padova (Universität Zürich), who was visiting Lahore, I have been able to examine some extracts of Suśrutasaṃhitā manuscripts held in the Woolner Collection…

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Suśrutasaṃhitā Cikitsāsthana 26: Vyājīkaraṇacikitsitam: Text and Translation from Nepalese Manuscript K

Posted on August 26, 2022August 31, 2022 by Kenneth Gregory Zysk

Introduction This paper represents a preliminary edition and translation of Suśruta Saṃhitā Cikitsāsthana 26. The verses in the chapter are composed in anuṣṭubh metre and deal with potency-therapy (vyājīkaraṇa). In comparison with the vulgate edition (A), K covers verses 1 through the beginning of 27, of which only the first five akṣaras are found. The…

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Note to “Doṣas by the Numbers”

Posted on January 22, 2022January 22, 2022 by Kenneth Gregory Zysk

In my recent publication “Doṣas by the Numbers: Buddhist Contributions to the Origins of the Tridoṣa-theory in Early Indian Medical Literature with Comparisons to early Greek Theories of the Humours” , I cited Suśrutasaṃhitā, Sūtrasthāna 1.24 (2) as follows, based on the vulgate edition of : śārīrās tv annapānamūlā vātapittakaphaśoṇitasannipātavaiṣamyanimittāḥ But bodily (unbalances) that have…

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Scribal Symbols for Inserting Letters and Words in the Oldest Nepalese Manuscript (KL-699) of the Suśrutasaṃhitā

Posted on June 11, 2021June 11, 2021 by Jason Birch

Apart from preserving an early, unpublished version of the Suśrutasaṃhitā , manuscript KL-699 may be one of the oldest dated Nepalese manuscripts to have survived . It is written in the so-called transitional Gupta script and comprises of at least four codicological units . This means that KL-699 is rich material for the study of palaeography, and…

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NAK 5-333 and the so-called conspicuous filling sign

Posted on April 12, 2021March 7, 2022 by Dominik Wujastyk

In one of the Nepalese manuscripts on which this project is based, the fifteenth-century Nepalese MS,  MS Kathmandu NAK 5-333, there are mysterious characters at a few places. For example, on folio 371v: they are the two similar characters on the fifth line from the top, in this enlargement: and another example Here, the surrounding…

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A conspicuous filling sign in proto Bengālī manuscripts

Posted on April 12, 2021April 12, 2021 by Dominik Wujastyk

by Birgit Kellner (Austrian Academy of Sciences) This document is kindly contributed by Birgit Kellner, who composed it on 13 November 2017, with input from: Patrick McAllister, Yasutaka Muroya, Markus Pastollnigg, Cristina Pecchia, Serena Saccone, Ernst Steinkellner, and Toshikazu Watanabe. On Dharmottarapradīpa ms fol. 3a (Tucci photographs 1939/Ngor monastery; earlier photographs taken by Sāṅkṛtyāyana probably…

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Fragments of a lost manuscript

Posted on February 13, 2021March 19, 2021 by Dominik Wujastyk

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has in its collection eight pages of a lost Nepalese palm-leaf manuscript that support extracts of the Suśrutasaṃhitā. The MS is accessioned as MS Los Angeles LACMA M.87.271a-g,[1]MS description at PanditProject. and images are posted on the LACMA website.[2]The overview photograph (view 1) lacks one page, which is…

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An anusvāra and the goals of editing

Posted on December 16, 2020October 21, 2021 by Dominik Wujastyk

We have a reading (SS.sū.1.10 … upaśamakaraṇārtham) where the final -m is an anusvāra in the earliest witnesses, K and H (in “Orthographic variants”, switch off “filter final anusvāra variants”). We want our edition to represent the earliest known transmission of the work. Scribal usage of daṇḍas is variable and not a determining editorial factor….

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SS.1.1.0-1.1.3

Posted on October 25, 2020November 4, 2020 by Dominik Wujastyk

SS.1.1.0 The opening scribal invocation of KL 699 dedicates the work to Kamalahasta “him with the lotus hands.” This is an honorific title used for the Buddhist Padmapāṇi or Avalokiteśvara. SS.1.1.1 MSS K originally read ādhyāyam, but a scribe corrected it to adhyāyam. N reads the ungrammatical ādhyāyam. Perhaps N was copied from K before…

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Recent Blog Posts

  • Scribal uncertainty about Dhanvantari
  • Book publication
  • Candraṭa’s editing of the Suśrutasaṃhitā
  • Progress report for June 2023
  • The problem of “the original text” according to AI

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The Suśruta Project is funded as a four-year Insight Grant by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanites Research Council. Grant no. 435-2020-1077.  Dates: 1 April 2020 - 31 March 2024. Applicaton DOI.

Supplementary funding is provided for the project from the Singhmar Chair Endowment Grant administered by the University of Alberta.

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