Where is the Astasahasrika Prajnaparamita manuscript located?

1) National Museum, Delhi
2) Louvre Museum, Paris
3) Bodleian Library, Oxford
4) Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

3

Astasahasrika Prajnaparamita manuscript is located in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

Unlike the terse lines of Jain painting, a flowing and sinuous line in subdued colour tones characterises Pala paintings. Like at Ajanta, the sculptural styles of Pala at monasteries and the painterly images have a similar language. A fine example of a Pala Buddhist palm leaf manuscript is Astasahasrika Prajnaparamita (Bodleian Library, Oxford) or the ‘Perfection of Wisdom’ written in eight thousand lines. Painted at the monastery of Nalanda in the fifteenth year of the reign of the Pala King, Ramapala, in the last quarter of the eleventh century, it has six pages of illustrations and wooden covers painted on both sides. Pala dynasty weakened with the coming of Muslim invaders. Pala art came to an end in the first half of the thirteenth century when the Muslim invaders attacked and caused destruction to the monasteries.