Thank you for the email with interesting answers.

> Apparently, at one place, the author refers to vidiza (modern Bhelsa,
> M.P.) as being situated between west and north (pazcimottarayomadhyam).
> This is taken by scholars to imply that the place of authorship was
> probably dhAnyakaTaka. You may want to compare this against the suggestion
> of Bengal and see which is more likely.
I see, but in any case it is not doubted that the origin of AMMK is
not in South India (T.N., K.), is it?

K.P. Jayaswal reasoning is based on one parivarta of AMMK called
rAjavyAkarana-parivarta, a part of 1005 verses. KPJ says that
author of AMMK pays the greatest attention to gauDa and
magadha.
The AMMK survey from nAga and gupta up to pAla times is
basically survey from gauDa and its surroundings written from the
point of view of gauDa, showing intimate concern with gauDa and
surrounding provincies. KPj says that for the authorof AMMK
gauDa meant the whole of Bengal and it includes magadha.

But i suppose that it is possible that it can be due to simple reason
- that the history in AMMK is spoken
as prophecy from the mouth of Buddha and it may not be related
author's location.

> In an earlier posting Petr Mares mentioned that vajrabodhi visited Lanka
> before he visited Ceylon. In this connection, has Petr explored why the
> name of the river which originates from the Potiyil (malaya) mountain of
> south India is also the name for the island of Ceylon, tAmraparNi?

It is very interesting note but I have to admit that I have very little
resources about the South India here - much less than I would like
to have - to enable me to find out basically anything about
tAmraparNi. You have some answer?
>
> According to Lal Mani Joshi the sarvatathAgatAdhiSThAna-vyUha, a
> semi-tantric Buddhist text found in Gilgit and belonging to the 5th or 6th
> century A.D. states that the Lord delivered this text at Potalaka parvata.
> Does anybody know more about this text and what exactly it says regarding
> the location of Potalaka? How old is the manuscript?

There is very interesting site discussing Gilgit manuscripts at:
http://ishi.lib.berkeley.edu/buddhist/bbrc/index.html

They have a large biblio about publications related to Gilgit sutras
http://ishi.lib.berkeley.edu/buddhist/bbrc/biblio_gilgit_mss.html

and they list the sutras on:
http://ishi.lib.berkeley.edu/buddhist/bbrc/list_gilgit_mss.html

professor Yao-ming Tsai who is responsible for this part of the site
may know the answers.

Sincerely

Petr Mares
Petr Mares
Lengqie Research
Hlavacova 1163
182 00, Prague 8
Czech Republic
Fax:420-2-2423-9157
Tel: 420-2-2422-9755
email: lengqie@gmx.net