File:5th or 6th century Weber Manuscript 5, Central Asian Paper, Central Asian Nagari (Turkestani Brahmi), Sanskrit.jpg

English: This is a part of nine Weber manuscripts discovered in the 19th-century in northwest China, analyzed and published in 1893 by August Friedrich Rudolf Hoernle. Later tracing suggest that the manuscripts were discovered in Kucha, in the region where the Bower manuscripts were discovered.

The manuscripts are now preserved at the Bodleian Library, Oxford University (MS 1091, ABCIM 238).

The 9 manuscripts are historically significant as they are among the oldest known paper manuscripts of the Indian subcontinent literature. Of the nine, four manuscripts have been traced to be on paper made in Nepal, other five on paper made in Central Asia.

The first 8 of the 9 manuscripts are in Sanskrit language, the last is a mix of Pali and Sanskrit language with numerous grammatical errors.

The Weber manuscripts are a collection of different texts written in different scropts. Four are in early northwest Gupta script, others in Turkestani Brahmi (formerly called Central Asian Nagari script). Both of these scripts became extinct long ago, because they evolved into other regional writing scripts such as Sarda, Siddha, Devanagari, Nandinagari and others.

For further information, see

1. Claus Vogel (1979), A History of Indian Literature, Volume 5, Part 4, page 309;

2. Three further collections of ancient manuscripts from Central Asia, A.F. Rudolf Hoernle (1897)

This is a photo of a 2-D artwork created before the 7th-century CE. The manuscripts were unearthed in the 19th-century and its photographs published in 1893 by A.F. Rudolf Hoernle in Volume LXII of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. This is 1,400+ year old 2-D Art. Therefore Wikimedia Commons PD-Art licensing guidelines apply. Any rights I have as a photographer is herewith donated to wikimedia commons under CC 4.0 license.