Gandhāran Buddhist texts
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The Gandhāran Buddhist texts are the oldest
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
The texts are attributed to the
Collections
The British Library Collection
In 1994, the
The collection is composed of a diversity of texts: a Dhammapada, discourses of the Buddha such as the Rhinoceros Sutra, avadanas and Purvayogas, commentaries and abhidharma texts.
There is evidence to suggest that these texts may belong to the Dharmaguptaka school.[8] 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."[9] 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.[9]
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
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 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,[13] 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,[14][15]} 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.[12]
He further reports that the "largest number of parallels for the sutras in the Senior collection are in the Saṃyutta Nikāya and the corresponding collections in Sanskrit and Chinese."[16]
The Schøyen collection
The Buddhist works within the
The Buddhist texts within the Schøyen collection include fragments of
Among the early Dharmaguptaka texts in the Schøyen Collection is a fragment in the Kharoṣṭhī script referencing the Six
University of Washington
One more manuscript, written on birch bark in a Buddhist monastery of the Abhidharma tradition, from the 1st or 2nd century CE, was acquired from a collector by the University of Washington Libraries in 2002. It is an early commentary on the Buddha's teachings, on the subject of human suffering.
Library of Congress
In 2003,
The Khotan Dharmapada
In 1892 a copy of the
The "Split" Collection
About the "Split" collection, Harry Falk writes:
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.[23]
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 and 46 BCE (95.4% probability, two sigma range), and the youngest peak is around 70 BCE, so this reconsideration puts this manuscript, that Harry Falk calls "An Avadana collection", into the first century BCE.[23]: p.19
In 2012, Harry Falk and Seishi Karashima published a damaged and partial Kharoṣṭhī manuscript of the Mahāyāna
The Bajaur Collection
The Bajaur Collection was discovered in 1999, and is believed to be from the ruins of a Buddhist monastery in the Dir District of Pakistan.[25] The name derives from the Bajaur district, whose boundary with the Dir district is marked by the banks of the river where the monastery was situated.[25]
The collection comprises fragments of 19 birch-bark scrolls and contains approximately 22 different texts. Most of the texts are not the work of the same scribe, with as many as 18 different hands identified.
Notable texts from the collection include the earliest identified
Published material
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,
The following scholars have published fragments of the Gandhāran manuscripts: Raymond Allchin, Mark Allon, Mark Barnard, Stefan Baums, John Brough, 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 overviews
- Ancient Buddhist Scrolls from Gandhāra (1999) by Richard Salomon, with Raymond Allchin and Mark Barnard. An early description of the finds.
- The Buddhist Literature of Ancient Gandhāra: An Introduction with Selected Translations (2018) by Richard Salomon. A modern update.
Editions of specific texts
- A Gandhari Version of the Rhinoceros Sutra (2000) by Richard Salomon and Andrew Glass
- Three Gandhari Ekottarikagama-Type Sutras (2001) by Mark Allon and Andrew Glass
- A New Version of the Gandhari Dharmapada and a Collection of Previous-Birth Stories (2003) by Timothy Lenz, Andrew Glass, and Bhikshu Dharmamitra
- Four Gandhari Samyuktagama Sutras (2007) by Andrew Glass and Mark Allon
- Two Gandhari Manuscripts of the "Songs of Lake Anavatapta" (2008) by Richard Salomon and Andrew Glass
- Gandharan Avadanas (2010) by Timothy Lenz
Other publications
- 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.
- Kharoshthi Manuscripts from Gandhara (2009) by M. Nasim Khan. Peshawar.
- "The ‘Split’ Collection of Kharoṣṭhī Text" (2011) by Harry Falk (Berlin) Annual Report of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology XIV (2011), 13–23. Online
- "A first‐century Prajñāpāramitā manuscript from Gandhāra - parivarta 1 (Texts from the Split Collection 1)" (2012) by Harry Falk and Seishi Karashima. Annual Report of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology XV (2012), 19–61. 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
See also
- Early Buddhist schools
- Early Buddhist Texts
- Gandharan Buddhism
- Greco-Buddhism
- Pali Canon
- Pre-Islamic scripts in Afghanistan
- Schools of Buddhism
- Palm-leaf manuscript
References
- ^ Salomon, Richard, (2018). 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..."
- ^ University of Washington. "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.
- ^ Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen. "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.
- ^ Olivelle 2006, p. 357.
- ^ Fumio 2000, p. 160.
- ^ Salomon 1999, p. 181.
- ^ University of Washington. "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.
- ^ Salomon & Glass 2000, p. 5.
- ^ a b Salomon & Glass 2000, p. 127.
- ^ Salomon 2003, pp. 73–92.
- ^ Salomon 2003, p. 77.
- ^ a b Salomon 2003, p. 78.
- ^ Salomon 1999, pp. 22–55.
- ^ Salomon 1999, pp. 69–71.
- ^ Salomon 2003, pp. 20–23.
- ^ Salomon 2003, p. 79.
- ^ Melzer 2014, p. 227.
- ^ Olivelle 2006, p. 356.
- ^ Presenters: Patrick Cabouat and Alain Moreau (2004). "Eurasia Episode III - Gandhara, the Renaissance of Buddhism". Eurasia. Episode 3. 11:20 minutes in. France 5 / NHK / Point du Jour International.
- ^ a b c Kim, Allen (July 29, 2019). "A rare 2,000-year-old scroll about the early years of Buddhism is made public". CNN. Retrieved August 22, 2019.
- ^ Cannady, Sheryl (July 29, 2019). "Rare 2,000-Year-Old Text of Early Buddhism Now Online". Library of Congress. Retrieved August 22, 2019.
- ^ a b Tucker, Neely (July 29, 2019). "Now Online! The Gandhara Scroll, a Rare 2,000-Year-Old Text of Early Buddhism". Library of Congress. Retrieved August 22, 2019.
- ^ a b Falk, Harry, (2011). " The ‘Split’ Collection of Kharoṣṭhī Texts", in Annual Report of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, ARIRIAB XIV (2011), pp. 13–23.
- ^ "A first‐century Prajñāpāramitā manuscript from Gandhāra - parivarta 1" (Texts from the Split Collection 1) Harry Falk and Seishi Karashima. Annual Report of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology XV (2012), 19–61.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Falk, Harry, and Ingo Strauch. “The Bajaur and Split Collections of Kharoṣṭhī Manuscripts within the Context of Buddhist Gāndhārī Literature.” From Birch Bark to Digital Data: Recent Advances in Buddhist Manuscript Research: Papers Presented at the Conference Indic Buddhist Manuscripts: The State of the Field. Stanford, June 15–19, 2009, edited by Paul Harrison and Jens-Uwe Hartmann, 1st ed., Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, Wien, 2014, pp. 51–78. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1vw0q4q.7. Accessed 9 May 2020.
- ^ "UW Press: Book in Series, Gandharan Buddhist Texts". Retrieved 2008-09-04.
- ^ Salomon, Richard, (2020)."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.
Sources
- Fumio, Enomoto (2000), "The Discovery of 'the Oldest Buddhist Manuscripts", The Eastern Buddhist, 32 (1): 157–166, JSTOR 44362247
- Baums, Stefan (2014), "Gandhāran Scrolls: Rediscovering an Ancient Manuscript Type", in Quenzer, Jörg; Bondarev, Dmitry; Sobisch, Jan-Ulrich (eds.), Manuscript Cultures: Mapping the Field (PDF), ISBN 9783110225631
- Melzer, Gudrun (2014), "A Paleographic Study of a Buddhist Manuscript from the Gilgit Region", in Quenzer, Jörg; Bondarev, Dmitry; Sobisch, Jan-Ulrich (eds.), Manuscript Cultures: Mapping the Field, ISBN 9783110225631
- ISBN 0-19-530532-9
- ISBN 978-0295977690
- Salomon, Richard; Glass, Andrew (2000). A Gāndhārī Version of the Rhinoceros Sūtra: British Library Kharoṣṭhī Fragment 5B. University of Washington Press. ISBN 978-0-295-98035-5.
- JSTOR 3217845, archived from the original(PDF) on May 23, 2020
- Allon, Mark (2004), "Wrestling with Kharosthi Manuscripts", BDK Fellowship Newsletter, 7
- ISBN 978-1-61429-168-8
External links
- Gandhari.org Complete Corpus, Catalog, Bibliography and Dictionary of Gāndhārī texts
- The Gāndhārī Dharmapada
- "The British Library Kharoṣṭhī Fragments" from University of Washington's Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project.