Executive summary

The correct library reference for this manuscript is
Discussion

In 1985, I published the first public description of this manuscript (Wujastyk 1985, pp.151-52, serial no.622).  I attach a PDF of these pages to this email.  The manuscript was stated to be "shelved at δ 41."

This is a location on the shelves of the Wellcome Library stack, where the staff know to find the manuscript.  The Indic manuscripts in the Wellcome Library are shelved following the "abcd" size-related shelving scheme of the British Library, that is to say, small manuscripts are at "a," bigger ones at "b" and so on.  "δ" means quite large manuscripts.  The Greek, not Latin, letters were used for the Wellcome Indic manuscripts to distinguish them clearly from numerous earlier confused and overlapping identification schemes.shelved at δ 41

One of these earlier schemes was derived from a partial list created in 1954 by the eminent Prof. V. Raghavan of Madras.  He visited the library for about three months that year, and went rapidly through many bundles of Sanskrit, Prakrit and Hindi manuscripts.  He scribbled alpha-numerical identifiers on the bundles and individual manuscripts, often using a blue crayon.  He later delivered to the library a rough, typed list of about 3000 titles (about half the collection) that listed titles in order of these alpha-numerical identifiers.  His list was crude and inconsistent, but nevertheless a major contribution and very useful as being the only guide to the collection between 1954 and 1977 (when I started curatorial work on the Wellcome manuscripts).  Unfortunately, after Raghavan's visit, a library curator who did not know Sanskrit tried to rearrange the collection physically according to subject matter.  This and other physical interventions caused many further confusions and losses of identity, so that by 1977 the Raghavan list in many cases no longer corresponded to the physically identifiable manuscripts on the shelves and in various boxes and cupboards.

Unfortunately, several "Raghavan numbers" got into the public domain, because scholars including Agehananda Bharati visited the library and read the Raghavan list.  David Pingree also published numerous "Raghavan numbers" in his Census of the Exact Sciences and his Astral Literature.  At least in Pingree's case, he actually saw and described the manuscripts (or photos) that he referred to, so they are guaranteed to exist, even if finding them physically may be hard.

To sum up, the Wellcome "Greek" shelf numbers are the current, public, accurate identifiers for items in the Wellcome Library's Indic collections.  If you cite a Greek shelfmark, the staff can look it up in a list, they can physically find the manuscript on the shelf, they can query a database to see if it has been microfilmed or digitized, etc. etc.  That's its real identifier.

The Raghavan numbers are strongly deprecated.  They have never been formally published by the library, and in many cases they are not reliable in any case. 

Raghavan gave the number I.33 to the Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā manuscript that is now called "Wellcome MS Indic delta 41".  I am sorry to see that this obsolete and unpublished Raghavan number keeps popping up in publications, most recently in Jacobsen's Yoga Powers (Brill, 2012, p.298).  It's really only by good luck that "I.33" actually once corresponded to something on the shelf that I was able to locate.  That designation is not used in any published library documentation nor is it used for the physical shelving of the manuscripts in the library stacks.  If a reader requests MS "I.33," or any Raghavan number, it is a matter of pure chance whether the library will be able to match it to a physical object.  If the reader does ever get the manuscript, it is quite possible that the staff have had to consult me privately to find out what was being asked for, since there has been no Sanskritist on the staff since I left in 2002.

Best,
Dominik

--
Dr Dominik Wujastyk
Department of South Asia, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies,
University of Vienna,
Spitalgasse 2-4, Courtyard 2, Entrance 2.1
1090 Vienna, Austria
and
Adjunct Professor,
Division of Health and Humanities,
St. John's Research Institute, Bangalore, India.
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