The Bower Manuscript is a medical manuscript written predominantly in the Sanskrit language,
made up of 51 birch-bark leaves, written in an early Indian script. It is today preserved as part of the collections of the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The Bower Manuscript in reality is a collection of seven distinct manuscripts, or it may be called a collective manuscript of seven parts.
Section 1 below is an edited extract from A History of Indian Medical Literature by G. J. Meulenbeld (1999-2002), vol. IIa, pp. 3-12.
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The Bower Manuscript is named after H. Bower who, being then a lieutenant, obtained it early in the year 1890, in Kucā, from a local inhabitant during a confidential mission from the Government of India. Kucā is the name of one of the principal oases and settlements of Eastern Turkestan (part of China), on the ancient great caravan route to China. The MS was found by native treasure- seekers in a stūpa close to the Ming Öi (the "Thousand Houses", a system of rock-cut grottos with Buddhist shrines) of Qum Turā about 13 (or 16) miles from Kucā, in February 1890. On his return to India, Lieutenant Bower took the MS to Simla, whence it was forwarded to Colonel J. Waterhouse, who was then the President of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. Colonel Waterhouse exhibited the MS at the monthly meeting of the Society on November 5, 1890, when also a note from Lieutenant Bower was read, explaining the circumstances of the discovery. After the meeting some attempts were made to decipher the MS, but they proved unsuccessful. However, a German Indologist, G. Bühler, succeeded in reading and translating two leaves of the MS, reproduced in the form of heliogravures in the Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. Immediately after his return to India in February 1891, A. F. R. Hoernle began to study the MS. At the meeting of the Society in April 1891, he was able to communicate the first decipherment. The Government of India sanctioned, in 1892, Hoernle's proposal to prepare a complete edition of the text, illustrated with facsimile plates, and accompanied by an annotated English translation. The first part of the edition appeared in 1893, the second part (in two fasciculi) in 1894-95, and the remaining parts in 1897.
After an interruption of several years, the Sanskrit Index was published in 1908, and a revised translation of the medical portions (I,II,and III) in 1909; the Introduction appeared in 1912.
The term 'Bower Manuscript' is not strictly correct, since it is, as to size, a combination of two manuscripts, a larger and a smaller. The larger manuscript is a complex of six smaller manuscripts which are separately paginated. The Bower Manuscript is therefore, in reality, a collection of seven distinct manuscripts, indicated as parts I to VII in Hoernle's edition.
The manuscript is written on fifty-one birch bark leaves of an oblong shape, in the form of those of an Indian pothī. The birch bark of the large portion of the manuscript is of a quality much inferior to that of the smaller portion. The hole for the passage of the binding string is placed about the middle of the left half of the leaves. This placement of the string hole and the oblong form of the leaves point to an imitation of palm leaf pothīs from Southern India by the scribes of Kucā. The seven parts of the manuscript are written in an essentially identical script, the Gupta script, which prevailed in Northern India from the fourth to the sixth centuries A.D. Some graphic peculiarities of the Bower MS indicate, according to Hoernle, that it was written at some time within the fourth century A.D. Distinctive characters of the script used enabled Hoernle to distinguish four different scribes, who wrote parts I-III, part IV, parts V and VII, and part VI respectively. He also arrived at the conclusion that the writers of parts I-III and V-VII were natives of India who had migrated to Kucā. To judge from the style of writing, the scribe of parts I - III originally came from the northern, the two scribes of parts V-VII from the southern part of the northern area of the Indian Gupta script. The writer of part IV may have been a native of Eastern Turkestan. All four writers must have been Buddhist monks, residing in a monastery near Kucā. The ultimate owner of the whole series of manuscripts, whose name appears to have been Yaśomitra, must have held a prominent position in that monastery, for the bundle of manuscripts was contained in the relic chamber of the memorial stūpa built in his honour.
The language in which the treatises of the Bower MS are written is a kind of mixed Sanskrit, i.e., a mixture of current literary Sanskrit and a Sanskrit with a varying proportion of Prakrit forms. The influence of Prakrit is far more pronounced in the more popular treatises on divination and incantation in parts IV-VII than in the more scientific medical treatises of parts I-III.
Parts I to III, the three medical treatises of the collection, comprise a total of 1,323 verses and some prose; ... It is evident from this familiarity with metrical writing that the author of the three medical treatises was well versed in Sanskrit composition. ... The author of parts IV-VII was not conversant with scholarly Sanskrit; these treatises are written, in a mixed type of language.
Part I opens with a flowery description of the Himalayas, where a group of munis reside, interested in the names and properties of medicinal plants. Mentioned by name are the following sages: Ātreya, Hārīta, Parāśara, Bhela, Garga, Śāmbavya, Suśruta, Vasiṣṭha, Karāla, and Kāpya. Suśruta, whose curiosity is aroused by a particular plant, approaches muni Kāśirāja, enquiring about the nature of this plant. Kāśīrāja, granting his request, tells him about the origin of the plant, which proves to be garlic (laśuna), its properties and uses .... A small tract on miscellaneous [medical] subjects follows.
Part II, which opens with a salutation addressed to the Tathāgatas, contains, as stated by the author, the Navanītaka, a standard manual (siddhasaṃkarṣa), containing the foremost formulae of the great sages, made up by them of old ....
Part III is a fragment of a formulary, the contents of which correspond to chapters one to three of part II.
Parts IV and V contain two short manuals of Pāśakakevalī, or cubomancy, i.e., the art of foretelling a person's future by means of the cast of dice. ...
Parts VI and VII contain two different portions of the same text, the Mahāmāyurī, Vidyārājñī, a Buddhist dhāraṇī that protects against snake-bite and other evils. ...
... An important peculiarity of the Bower MS consists of its varying attitude towards the number of the doṣas [humours]. In many instances it accepts the traditional number of three, vāta, pitta, and kapha: 1 15 but in a smaller number of passages it appears to accept blood (rakta) as a doṣa. ...
... the medical parts of the Bower MS (I-III) constitute the earliest collections of recipes known. They give evidence of a long medical tradition, connected with numerous ancient authorities, and may be based on similar types of medical writings antedating the composition of the saṃhitās of Caraka, Suśruta and others.
Palaeographical studies by Dani (1986) and especially Sander (1987) present compelling evidence for a date of about AD 500-550 for the Bower manuscript.