Indian Epigraphy c9.t2.6

c9.t2.6

Among the earliest birch-bark manuscript so far discovered, we may count the Khotan copy of the Prakrit *Dhammapada* written in Kharoṣṭhī characters of about the 2nd or 3rd century A.D., the manuscripts of the Sanskrit Buddhist work *Saṃyuktāgamasūtra* copied about the 4th century A.D., the Bower manuscripts (the sheets of which have a hole in the midd e for a string to pass through) and the Bakhshali manuscript of a mathematical work copied about the 8th century A.D.¹ But the majority of birch-bark manuscripts are of the 15th and later centuries.