Van Pelt Library -South Asian Studies

The Penniman-Gribbel Collection of Sanskrit Manuscripts

The University of Pennsylvania possesses a collection of almost 3000 Indic manuscripts, the largest in the Western hemisphere. The material is almost all from India, but a few items are from Burma,Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Tibet.

A very few of the manuscripts had been acquired in chance fashion by the Library and the Museum before 1930, but in that year, Provost Josiah Penniman gave a sum of money to purchase Indic manuscripts, and shortly afterwards obtained a donation from the late Mr. John Gribbel. Other money came from Dr. Charles W. Burr. the Faculty Research Fund, and the Cotton Fund. Some manuscripts have been donated. The purchases were made in India, between 1930 and 1935, under the direction of Prof. W. Norman Brown.

The entire collection is included in H. Poleman's Census of Indic Manuscripts in the United States and Canada which given information concerning title, author (when known), material, number, and size of folios, number of lines of writing on a side, script, date (when given), copyist (when named), and the library number. There is also a microfiche set of the manuscripts entitled The University of Pennsylvania Indic Manuscripts (located in Microtexts Microfiche 965). This work was done under the auspices of the Institute for Advanced Studies of World Religions.

The language of most of the manuscripts is Sanskrit, and the works are almost entirely connected with Hinduism (including here the Vedas). the other two great Indic religions, namely Jainism and Buddhism are represented by only a few works. There are a few manuscripts in Pali, Burmese, Sinhalese, Tibetan, Jaina Maharashtri Prakrit, and some of the modern languages. The script is usually Devanagari, but a few others appear, such as Tamil, Telugu, Burmese, Sinhalese, and Tibetan. The manuscripts are generally written on paper: these are from western, northern, eastern and central India. The few others are on palm leaf, and come from eastern and southern India, or outlying regions of 'Greater India'. the age of the manuscript is from the middle of the 15th century, although most of the materials are of the 17th and 18 centuries. This period is that of the average India manuscript, older documents are comparatively rare.

We have examples of many of the standard texts, such as the Rgveda, some of the brahmans, parts of the epics, and legendary histories called Puranas, some legal texts, philosophical works, grammatical treatises, belles lettres, hymns of praise to various deities, sectarian religion book. We have also much material that represents texts so far unpublished or only inadequately published.

One of the most important classes of material in the collection is that of mediaeval and current practice of domestic religious rites or sacraments. the most ancient texts of this department of Indian religions have been fairly well explored. Later rites, which differ from the older as mediaeval and modern Christian baptism, marriage, funerals differ from those of early Christianity, have not been covered as well.

Another slightly worked department of Indic civilization represented here is that of mediaeval law. In our collection the most outstanding item in this category is the code of the great Sivaji (1627-1680), a Maratha chieftain of western India who bitterly fought the Muslim and perhaps more than any other single leader contributed to the downfall of the Mughal empire. He endeavored to re-establish Hinduism, devoted himself to the protection of the cow and honor of the Brahmans, and had his legal system modeled with timely variations on the orthodox Hindu codes. A voluminous and rare Sanskrit manuscript in our possession contains his system as formulated by one of his Brahman ministers.

We have some valuable manuscripts deal with Indian medicine, some of them coming from Nepal, and one being devoted particularly to the use of mercury in therapy.

A cultic Hinduism known as Shakti, wherein the male creative principle and female energization of it constitute inseparable associates, is represented by between 200 and 300 items in the collection, many of them unpublished.

Grammar is very strongly illustrated in the collection.

Philosophy, especially the Vedanta, is illustrated in many texts, of which there are some unpublished texts. The Nyaya philosophy is also represented in some unpublished works.

One of the most famous Indian story collections, compiled about a thousand years ago, was known as the Brhatkatha 'Great Tale', and a version of this, by Kshemendra, of which perhaps only six other manuscripts have so far been reported, is represented by one of our Sanskrit manuscripts.

Among the rare works is the Ganitanamamala by Haridatta, an astrological work. Another is the Prayashcittaviveka by Sulapani, a work on the rites of expiation. till another is the Smrtikaustubha, a text of death rites by Antadeva, who wrote in the first half of the 13th century and was one of the earliest authorities on later Hindu ritual. A curiosity is an anonymous and probably incomplete text in dialectic Hindi on birds as omens, showing rude paintings of sixteen birds, some with onomatopoetic names not appearing in the Hindi dictionaries, and indicating whether these birds are favorable or unfavorable in connection with ten topics, such as staring on a journey, or entering into a business association. It was possibly a village soothsayer's pocket guide.

One of the oldest dated manuscripts is of the Nyayamakaranda by Anandabodhacarya, an unpublished work on logic, of which three other manuscripts are listed in Aufrecht's Catalogus Catalogorum of Indic manuscripts. The colophon of our manuscript gives a date equivalent to 1505 A.D. a very old date for paper manuscript in India except in western India, and indeed old for manuscript anywhere in India except western India and Nepal.

David N. Nelson, South Asia Bibliographer
University of Pennsylvania, Van Pelt Library
3420 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6206
tel.: 215-898-7460; fax: 215-898-0559
e-mail: nelsond@pobox.upenn.edu