A “ Mystery manuscript” discovered in Trafford Archives has been identified as a manual of rules for Burmese Monks.
The text, which had been stored in a box for the last twenty years was identified by an expert in Burmese history from Manchester Metropolitan University.
Dr Tilman Frasch, Senior Lecturer in History at the University was called on by Karen Cliff, Local Studies Specialist at the Archives, and identified it as a “nissaya” of a manual of rules for Buddhist monks, meaning short portions written in the ancient Pali language are interspersed with Burmese translations.
The pages are made of palm leaves treated with oil to make them pliable. Although the last page, which usually contains the date a manuscript was made, was missing, Dr Tilman used the condition of the leaves to estimate that the manuscript dates from around 1850.
The original manual, known as the Khuddasikkha, is believed to have been written by the monk Dhammasiri Thera, who appears to have lived in Sri Lanka at some time between the 4th and the 11th centuries CE.
Karen Cliff said: “While we were back cataloguing objects we found the manuscript in a box, but we didn’t know what it was, other than that it was some kind of religious text – we couldn’t read it.”
Aware that Chethams Library had a similar manuscript, Karen got in touch with the school who put her in contact with Dr Frasch.
She said. “For us it was an invaluable piece of information. It has been in the archives since maybe around 1900 and has been in the box we found it in for 20 years, but we have no idea where it was before then. Our mission now is to find out how it came to us, we will look through the archive minutes and it would be nice if we could give it a little more provenance.”
Dr Frasch said that while the manuscript was, unfortunately, not complete, interest in Eastern religions and Buddhism in particular was always high.
The manuscript will now be preserved safely in the archives.
