Bower Manuscript

The "Bower Manuscript" is tamil manuscript written in the Brahmi alphabet. It was purchased by Hamilton Bower in Kucha from Haji Ghulam Qadir. Bower forwarded the manuscript, made up of 51 birch-bark leaves, to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, where it eventually made its way into the hands of Dr. Augustus Hoernle. Though at first considered "unintelligible", it was eventually deciphered by Hoernle and was considered one of the most brilliant achievements of his career.

The Bower Manuscript was discovered in 1889 by a party of treasure-hunters near Kucha, south of the T'ien Shan on the Silk Road. It's discovery sent a shock-wave through the world of Indian scholarship, pointing to the existence of a forgotten Buddhist civilization in Chinese Turkestan [Peter Hopkirk, "Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Central Asia", 1980, p.44-45] .

References

* Peter Hopkirk, "Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Central Asia" (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1980) ISBN 0-87023-435-8
* A. F. Rudolf Hoernle, "The Bower manuscript; facsimile leaves, Nagari transcript, romanised transliteration and English translation with notes" (Calcutta: Supt., Govt. Print., India, 1908-1912. reprinted New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 1987)