Bower Manuscript

The Bower Manuscript is an early birch bark document, dated to the Gupta era (between the 4th and the 6th century). This Sanskrit language manuscript is written in the Late Brahmi script, and contains some Prakrit. It is an Indian text, one of the oldest manuscripts known to have survived into the modern era, that was discovered near a ruined Buddhist monastery near Kuchar in Chinese Turkestan.

The manuscript is notable as a benchmark for ancient literary tradition in India, and the evidence of the spread and sharing of ideas in ancient times between India, China and central Asia. It is also notable for preserving one of the earliest treatises on Indian medicine (Ayurveda). Rudolf Hoernle (1910) suggested that the text of the manuscript contains excerpts of the (otherwise unknown) Bheda Samhita on medicine. The medical parts (I-III) constitute may be based on similar types of medical writings antedating the composition of the saṃhitās of Caraka, Suśruta, and as such rank with the earliest surviving texts on Ayurveda.