གསལ་རྒྱལ་གྱ་ཚགས་ས་བཅད་པ intro.11

intro.11

Non-Tibetan sources for Verses for Prasenajit include two Sanskrit fragments from Gilgit and two complete Sanskrit manuscripts, one housed in the Potala and the other held at the Cambridge University Library. The Potala manuscript, which bears the title Prasenajit­paripṛcchā­sūtra (The Sūtra of Prasenajit’s Question) rather than Prasenajidgāthā (Verses for Prasenajit), has been edited and collated with the Gilgit fragments by Bhikṣuṇī Vinītā (Vinita Tseng) within A Unique Collection of Twenty Sūtras in a Sanskrit Manuscript from the Potala (2010).⁸ Ven. Vinītā notes that the collection as a whole lacks a colophon, perhaps because only the first forty-four leaves are preserved, and she states that there is insufficient evidence to date it, save to say that because it quotes The Sūtra on the Descent into Laṅkā (Laṅkāvatāra­sūtra, ), the collection appears to be later than that text.⁹ However, Jonathan Silk, in a review of Ven. Vinītā’s work, speculates that the manuscript could be from the thirteenth century.¹⁰