DTA is found in a more or less complete form in five manuscripts, with extracts of varying length in three others. Henel described all but one of the manuscripts, and for practical reasons the sigla used by him are retained in this edition. The descriptions below are to a considerable extent based on those in N.R. Ker's Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon.

The contents of the respective manuscripts are summarised in Table 1.

Descriptions

London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. iii, fols. 2–173 (A)

Ker, Catalogue, no. 186

Godden, Second Series, pp. lv–lvi

Scragg, The Corpus of Vernacular Homilies, pp. 248–9

This is a miscellaneous and now somewhat disordered manuscript containing items of mostly monastic concern, which originally began with copies of the Regula s. Benedicti and the Regularis concordia, both in Latin with Old English gloss. DTA appears on fols. 65v–73r, beginning with the second section in this edition under the rubric DE PRIMO DIE SECULI SIVE DE EQUINOCTIO VERNA LI. This is in fact the only heading which appears in this copy of DTA, suggesting that the scribe considered it to be the title of the whole work. Other Ælfrician pieces are the Colloquy, the second English letter for Wulfstan, and a version of CH II. 14. The manuscript also contains anonymous homilies, prayers and prognostic texts. The start of each new work is generally marked with a rubric, but there is no demarcation between the end of DTA and the beginning of the next piece, a short note opening with the words Noes earc wæs þreo hund fæþma lang 7 fiftiges wid. The untitled first section of DTA in the present edition, beginning Ic wolde eac gif ic dorste, is here transferred to the end. A's text of DTA contains many careless copying errors.

The manuscript is dated by Ker to s. ximed. It is item 296 in the catalogue drawn up in the time of Henry of Eastry, prior of Christ Church, Canterbury from 1284 to 1331, under the heading Batte super Regulam beati Benedicti (Ælfric Bata may have been thought at Canterbury to be the author of the Regularis concordia), and Christ Church may well be its place of origin.

The manuscript suffered damage in the Cotton Library fire of 1731, and the leaves are now mounted separately