མཆག་ཏ་གདགས་པའ་མད intro.4

intro.4

The Sūtra “Declaring What Is Supreme” may have had a significant status in early Buddhist Central Asia, since we find Sanskrit fragments of the sūtra and its commentaries in a variety of manuscripts unearthed in present-day Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China. In addition to an unpublished fragment in the Hoernle Collection,³ a fragment in the Pelliot Collection was published by Bernard Pauly.⁴. The Turfan Collection also holds two fragments from commentaries on the sūtra: a Sanskrit fragment partially edited by Ernst Waldschmidt that includes the colophon,⁵ and an Old Turkish and Sanskrit bilingual fragment containing the beginning of a commentary on the sūtra.⁶