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{{Short description|Ancient Gandhāran Buddhist manuscript}}
[[File:Fragmentary_Buddhist_text_-_Gandhara_birchbark_scrolls_(1st_C),_part_31_-_BL_Or._14915.jpg|thumb|260px|Gandhara [[Birch bark manuscript|birchbark scroll]] fragments (c. 1st century) from the British Library Collection]]
{{EarlyBuddhism}}
[[File:Manuscrit BnF pali 715-A.jpg|thumb|Incomplete birchbark manuscript of the [[Dhammapada]] in Gandhari language acquired by the [[Jules-Léon Dutreuil de Rhins|Dutreuil de Rhins]] mission (1891–1894) in Central Asia. End of the 1st century to 3rd century. [[Bibliothèque nationale de France]]]]
The '''Gandhāran Buddhist texts''' are the oldest [[Buddhism|Buddhist]] manuscripts yet discovered, dating from about the 1st century BCE to 3rd century CE,<ref>[[Richard G. Salomon (academic)|Salomon, Richard]], (2018). [https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Richard-Salomon/dp/1614291683?asin=1614291683&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1 The Buddhist Literature of Ancient Gandhara: An Introduction with Selected Translations (Classics of Indian Buddhism) ], Wisdom Publications, '''p.1''': "...Subsequent studies have confirmed that these and other similar materials that were discovered in the following years date from between the first century BCE and the third century CE..."</ref><ref>University of Washington. [https://asian.washington.edu/early-buddhist-manuscripts-project "The Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project"]: "...These manuscripts date from the first century BCE to the third century CE, and as such are the oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts as well as the oldest manuscripts from South Asia..." Retrieved 18 September 2021.</ref><ref>Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen. [https://www.en.gandhara.indologie.uni-muenchen.de/index.html "Buddhist Manuscripts from Gandhara"]: "...The discovery of the earliest Buddhist manuscripts – written in Gāndhārī language and Kharoṣṭhī script and dating from the 1st c. BCE to the 4th c. CE – has revolutionized our understanding of this formative phase of Buddhism..." Retrieved 18 September 2021.</ref> and are also the oldest Indian manuscripts.{{sfn|Salomon|2018|p=1}} They represent the literature of [[Gandharan Buddhism]] from present-day northwestern [[Pakistan]] and eastern [[Afghanistan]], and are written in [[Gāndhārī language|Gāndhārī]].▼
▲The '''Gandhāran Buddhist texts''' are the oldest [[Buddhism|Buddhist]] manuscripts yet discovered, dating from about the 1st century BCE to 3rd century CE
They were sold to European and Japanese institutions and individuals, and are currently being recovered and studied by several universities. The Gandhāran texts are in a considerably deteriorated form (their survival alone is extraordinary), but educated guesses about reconstruction have been possible in several cases using both modern preservation techniques and more traditional textual scholarship, comparing previously known [[Pāli]] and [[Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit]] versions of texts. Other Gandhāran Buddhist texts—"several and perhaps many"—have been found over the last two centuries but lost or destroyed.{{sfn|Olivelle|2006|p=357}}
The texts are attributed to the [[Dharmaguptaka]] sect by [[Richard G. Salomon (
==Collections==
===The British Library Collection===
In 1994, the [[British Library]] acquired a group of some eighty Gandharan manuscript fragments from the first half of the 1st century CE, encompassing twenty‐seven birch‐bark scrolls.<ref>University of Washington. [https://asian.washington.edu/early-buddhist-manuscripts-project "The Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project"]: "...twenty‐seven unique birch‐bark scrolls, written in the Kharoṣṭhī script and the Gāndhārī language, that had been acquired by the British Library in 1994..." Retrieved 23 September 2021.</ref> These [[birch bark manuscript]]s were stored in clay jars, which preserved them. They are thought to have been found in western [[Pakistan]], the location of [[Gandhara]], buried in ancient [[vihara|monasteries]]. A team has been at work, trying to decipher the manuscripts: several volumes have appeared to date (see below). The manuscripts were written in the [[Gāndhārī language]] using the [[Kharosthi|Kharoṣṭhī script]] and are therefore sometimes also called the ''Kharoṣṭhī Manuscripts''.
The collection is composed of a diversity of texts: a ''[[Dhammapada]]'', discourses of the Buddha such as the ''[[Rhinoceros Sutra]]'', [[avadana]]s and [[Purvayoga]]s, commentaries and [[abhidharma]] texts.
There is evidence to suggest that these texts may belong to the [[Dharmaguptaka]] school.{{sfn|Salomon|Glass|2000|p=5}} There is an inscription on a jar pointing to that school, and there is some textual evidence as well. On a semi-related point, the Gandhāran text of the ''Rhinoceros Sutra'' contains the word ''mahayaṇaṣa'', which some might identify with "[[Mahayana]]."{{sfn|Salomon|Glass|2000|p=127}} However, according to Salomon, in Kharoṣṭhī orthography there is no reason to think that the phrase in question, ''amaṃtraṇa bhoti mahayaṇaṣa'' ("there are calls from the multitude"), has any connection to the Mahayana.{{sfn|Salomon|Glass|2000|p=127}}
===The Senior Collection===
The Senior collection was bought by Robert Senior, a British collector. The Senior collection may be slightly younger than the British Library collection. It consists almost entirely of [[pali canon|canonical]] sutras, and, like the British Library collection, was written on birch bark and stored in clay jars.{{sfn|Salomon|2003|pp=73–92}} The jars bear inscriptions referring to Macedonian rather than ancient Indian month names, as is characteristic of the [[Kanishka|Kaniska]] era from which they derive.{{sfn|Salomon|2003|p=77}} There is a "strong likelihood that the Senior scrolls were written, at the earliest, in the latter part of the first century A.D., or, perhaps more likely, in the first half of the second century. This would make the Senior scrolls slightly but significantly later than the scrolls of the British Library collection, which have been provisionally dated to the first half of the first century."{{sfn|Salomon|2003|p=78}} Salomon writes:
{{quote|The Senior collection is superficially similar in character to the British Library collection in that they both consist of about two dozen birch bark manuscripts or manuscript fragments arranged in scroll or similar format and written in Kharosthi script and Gandhari language. Both were found inside inscribed clay pots, and both are believed to have come from the same or nearby sites, in or around [[Hadda, Afghanistan|Hadda]] in eastern Afghanistan. But in terms of their textual contents, the two collections differ in important ways. Whereas the British Library collection was a diverse mixture of texts of many different genres written by some two dozen different scribes,{{sfn|Salomon|1999|pp=22–55}} all or nearly all of the manuscripts in the Senior collection are written in the same hand, and all but one of them seem to belong to the same genre, namely sutra. Moreover, whereas all of the British Library scrolls were fragmentary and at least some of them were evidently already damaged and incomplete before they were interred in antiquity,{{sfn|Salomon|1999|pp=69–71}}{{sfn|Salomon|2003|pp=20–23}}} some of the Senior scrolls are still more or less complete and intact and must have been in good condition when they were buried. Thus the Senior scrolls, unlike the British Library scrolls, constitute a unified, cohesive, and at least partially intact collection that was carefully interred as such.{{sfn|Salomon|2003|p=78}}}}
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===Library of Congress===
In 2003,<ref name="kim">{{cite web|last=Kim|first=Allen|title=A rare 2,000-year-old scroll about the early years of Buddhism is made public|url=https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/29/world/gandhara-scroll-buddhism-trnd/index.html|publisher=[[CNN]]|date=July 29, 2019|access-date=August 22, 2019}}</ref> the [[Library of Congress]] purchased a scroll from a British antiquities dealer.<ref name="cannady">{{cite web|last=Cannady|first=Sheryl|title=Rare 2,000-Year-Old Text of Early Buddhism Now Online |url=https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-19-073/?loclr=ealn|publisher=[[Library of Congress]]|date=July 29, 2019|access-date=August 22, 2019}}</ref> Called the "Bahubuddha Sutra", or "The Many Buddhas Sutra", the scroll arrived in pieces in a pen case<ref name="tucker">{{cite web|last=Tucker|first=Neely|title=Now Online! The Gandhara Scroll, a Rare 2,000-Year-Old Text of Early Buddhism|url=https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2019/07/now-online-the-gandhara-scroll-a-rare-2000-year-old-text-of-early-buddhism/|publisher=[[Library of Congress]]|date=July 29, 2019|access-date=August 22, 2019}}</ref> but retains 80% of the text with the beginning and ending missing due to age.<ref name="kim"/> The content is similar to the "[[Mahāvastu]]."<ref name="tucker"/> They mostly contain educational content.The text is narrated by [[Gautama Buddha]] and "tells the story of the 13 Buddhas who preceded him, his own emergence and the prediction of a future Buddha."<ref name="kim"/>
===The Khotan Dharmapada===
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{{quote|The local origins of the present collection are not clear. Several part[s] of it were seen in Peshawar in 2004. According to usually reliable informants the collection of birch-barks was found in a stone case in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area, comprising the Mohmand Agency and Bajaur. It was split on arrival and some parts are now in a Western collection, while others went to a Government agency and yet other parts may still be with the private owner.<ref name="Falk">Falk, Harry, (2011). [https://www.academia.edu/3561702/split_collection " The ‘Split’ Collection of Kharoṣṭhī Texts"], in ''Annual Report of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology'', ARIRIAB XIV (2011), pp. 13–23.</ref>}}
The earliest manuscript from Split collection is the one that contains a series of [[Avadana]] tales, mentioning a king and Ajivikas, and Buddhist sects like Dharmaguptakas, Mahasamghikas and Seriyaputras, as well as persons like Upatisya and the thief [[Aṅgulimāla]] who gets advice from his wife in Pataliputra. This manuscript is currently held in three glass frames covering around 300 fragments, and the style of handwriting has affinities to Ashokan period. A small fragment was subjected to radiocarbon analysis at the Leibnitz Labor in Kiel, Germany, in 2007, the result was that it is from sometime between 184 BCE
In 2012, Harry Falk and Seishi Karashima published a damaged and partial Kharoṣṭhī manuscript of the Mahāyāna ''[[
===The Bajaur Collection===
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Notable texts from the collection include the earliest identified [[Vinaya]] text, in the form of a [[Pratimoksa]] sutra, and a relatively complete [[Mahayana]] text connected with the Buddha [[Aksobhya]] showing a well-developed movement in the vein of [[Pure Land]] Buddhism.<ref name=f&s/> While the majority of the texts in the collection are Buddhist texts, two non-Buddhist works are included in the form of a loan contract and an [[Arthasastra]]/Rajnitit text, one of the few known [[Sanskrit]] texts composed using the Kharosthi script.<ref name=f&s/>
==Published
Scholarly critical editions of the texts of the University of Washington and the British Library are being printed by the University of Washington Press in the "Gandhāran Buddhist Texts" series,<ref name="uw">{{cite web|url=http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/books/series/Seriesbuddhist.html|title=UW Press: Book in Series, Gandharan Buddhist Texts|access-date=2008-09-04}}</ref> beginning with a detailed analysis of the Gāndhārī [[Rhinoceros Sutra]] including [[phonology]], [[morphology (linguistics)|morphology]], [[orthography]], [[paleography]], etc. Material from the Schøyen Collection is published by Hermes Publishing, Oslo, Norway.
The following scholars have published fragments of the Gandhāran manuscripts: [[Raymond Allchin]], Mark Allon, Mark Barnard, Stefan Baums, John Brough, [[Harry Falk (Indologist)|Harry Falk]], Andrew Glass, Mei‐huang Lee, Timothy Lenz, [[Sergey Oldenburg]], Richard Salomon and [[Émile Senart]]. Some of the published material is listed below:
===General
* ''Ancient Buddhist Scrolls from Gandhāra'' (1999) by
* ''The Buddhist Literature of Ancient Gandhāra: An Introduction with Selected Translations'' (2018) by Richard Salomon. A modern update.
===Editions of
* ''A Gandhari Version of the [[Rhinoceros Sutra]]'' (2000) by Richard Salomon and Andrew Glass
* ''Three Gandhari [[Ekottara Agama|Ekottarikagama]]-Type Sutras'' (2001) by Mark Allon and Andrew Glass
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* ''Gandharan [[Avadana]]s'' (2010) by Timothy Lenz
===Other
*''Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection: Buddhist Manuscripts, Vol. 1.'' (2000) by Jens Braarvig (editor). Oslo: Hermes Publishing.
*'Buddhist Kharoshthi Manuscripts from Gandhara" by M. Nasim Khan. ''Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences.'' Vol. XII, Nos. 1 & 2 (2004): 9–15. Peshawar.
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* "The ‘Split’ Collection of Kharoṣṭhī Text" (2011) by Harry Falk (Berlin) [http://iriab.soka.ac.jp/content/pdf/aririab/Vol.%20XIV%20(2011).pdf ''Annual Report of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology'' XIV] (2011), 13–23. [https://www.academia.edu/3561702/split_collection Online]
*"A first‐century Prajñāpāramitā manuscript from Gandhāra - parivarta 1 (Texts from the Split Collection 1)" (2012) by Harry Falk and Seishi Karashima. [http://iriab.soka.ac.jp/content/pdf/aririab/Vol.%20XV%20(2012).pdf ''Annual Report of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology'' XV] (2012), 19–61. [https://www.academia.edu/3561115/prajnaparamita-5 Online]
==Analysis of the manuscripts' contents==
First studies of these Gandharan manuscripts in 1990’s seemed to show that Sūtra texts were prominent in these collections, but subsequent research showed that such a situation was not evident. Now researchers, like [[Richard G. Salomon (professor of Asian studies)|Richard Salomon]], consider that Buddhist discourses (sūtras) are actually a small portion of the whole Gandharan texts, especially in the oldest period. These early sūtras tend to be only a few common and popular texts, mostly belonging to [[Ksudraka Agama|Kṣudraka]]/[[ Khuddaka Nikaya|Khuddaka]] type of material. Richard Salomon, quoting [[Anne Blackburn]], considers them to be part of a limited “practical canon” used in Gandharan monasteries, he concludes that by comparing them to Sanskrit manuscripts from [[Xinjiang]] and katikāvatas instructions from Sri Lankan material.<ref>Salomon, Richard, (2020).[https://www.academia.edu/39171328/Research_on_the_Sa%E1%B9%83yukta_%C4%81gama_in_press_august_2020_?auto=download "Where are the Gandharan Sūtras?: Some Reflections on the Contents"], in (ed.) Dhammadinnā, Research on the Saṃyukta-āgama, Dharma Drum Corporation, Taipei, pp. 173-210.</ref>
==See also==
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* [[Pre-Islamic scripts in Afghanistan]]
* [[Schools of Buddhism]]
* [[Palm-leaf manuscript]]
==References==
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==Sources==
*{{citation|last=Fumio|first=Enomoto|title=The Discovery of 'the Oldest Buddhist Manuscripts|journal=The Eastern Buddhist|volume=32|issue=1|jstor=44362247|year=2000|pages=157–166}}
*{{citation|last=Baums|first=Stefan| editor-last =Quenzer|editor-first =Jörg | editor2-last =Bondarev | editor2-first =Dmitry |editor3-last=Sobisch|editor3-first=Jan-Ulrich| article=Gandhāran Scrolls: Rediscovering an Ancient Manuscript Type|url=https://stefanbaums.com/publications/baums_2014_3.pdf|year=2014|title=Manuscript Cultures: Mapping the Field|publisher=Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG |isbn=9783110225631}}
*{{citation|last=Melzer|first=Gudrun| editor-last =Quenzer|editor-first =Jörg | editor2-last =Bondarev | editor2-first =Dmitry |editor3-last=Sobisch|editor3-first=Jan-Ulrich| article=A Paleographic Study of a Buddhist Manuscript from the Gilgit Region|year=2014|title=Manuscript Cultures: Mapping the Field|publisher=Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG |isbn=9783110225631}}
*{{citation|last=Olivelle|first=Patrick|author-link=Patrick Olivelle|title=Between the Empires: Society in India 300 BCE to 400 CE|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=efaOR_-YsIcC&q=substantial|year=2006|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|isbn=0-19-530532-9}}
*{{citation|last=Salomon|first=Richard|author-link=Richard G. Salomon (
* {{cite book |last1=Salomon |first1=Richard |last2=Glass |first2=Andrew |title=A Gāndhārī Version of the Rhinoceros Sūtra: British Library Kharoṣṭhī Fragment 5B |date=2000 |publisher=University of Washington Press |isbn=978-0-295-98035-5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cTmN8Xs9xBkC |language=en}}
*{{citation|last=Salomon|first=Richard|author-link=Richard G. Salomon (
*{{citation|last=Allon|first=Mark|title=Wrestling with Kharosthi Manuscripts|journal=BDK Fellowship Newsletter|volume=7|year=2004}}
*{{citation|last=Salomon|first=Richard|author-link=Richard G. Salomon (
==External links==
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