Weiner Mihályné szerk.: Az Iparművészeti Múzeum Évkönyvei 6. (Budapest, 1963)

HOPP FERENC MÚZEUM - MUSÉE FERENC HOPP - Kovács, György: Pancamahäraksäsüträni „The Sütra-s of the Five Great Protectors". A Description of the Manuscript

GYÖRGY KOVÁCS—EDIT TÓTH PANOAMAHARAKSASUTRANI THE SÜTRA-S OF THE FIVE GREAT PROTECTORS" J 3 I. A DESCRIPTION OF THE MANUSCRIPT The Nepalese Collection of the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts

1 includes an interesting object: an illuminated manuscript written in the läncha script and Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit language which concerns the topic mentioned in the title.

2 In conformance to the purpose of our Yearbook our study is limited to a full description of the manuscript in question (Inv. No. 6120) and the detailed treatment and appreciation of its miniatures.

3 Those aspects of the manuscript which are related to the sphere of linguistics, religious history etc., demand a separate study, thus these branches of knowledge shall be used only with the most important data necessary to give a full picture of the manuscript. Two finely carved wooden plates of brown die, with traces of red paint in the grooves of the carving hold together the pages of the manuscript. The plates measure 43x11.8 cm, and are 1.7 cm thick. The text is painted with golden letters on 143 sheets of blue-black flexible Nepalese paper. There are also some empty pages, the purpose of which are partly to prevent the miniatures and especially the first and last pages of the illuminated text nearest to the inner sides of the wooden plates from wearing off. The folios measure 41.7x11.4 cm. With the exception of the first folio recto (marked with „b" in the following) and of the last folio verso (marked with j;

a" below), the text fills both sides of all folios, totalling 284 pages. The folios are numbered on the verso sides only, w

r

ith numerals on the right and writing on the left. Each page contains 5 lines of text, with the exception of pages Ija, 36/a, 75/a, 130/a and 134/a, embellished by the portrait of the five Jina-s (Dhyäni-buddha-s).

4 Since the letters of these are larger (1.6 cm high) than on the other pages (0.8 cm high) they contain only 3 lines of text each. The text itself is painted on a polished field of 35 X 6.5 cm on each page; the letters are so regular as to convey the impression of printing. With few exceptions the pages are in good condition; more serious wear and damage caused by worms are visible in spots. In some places smaller areas of wear and inexactitudes of the painting cause difficulties in reading the text, or at any rate are linguistically difficult. On both sides of each page there is a hole for the cord, which serves to fix the manuscript. These holes are 14.5 cm from each other, both are surrounded by an empty square of 3x3 cm. These cause an interruption in the three central lines of the text at two places, repeated on all pages. There are eleven miniatures in all; five of them depict the five Jina-s,