Gandhara and Its Early Buddhist Manuscripts
Gandhara was an ancient region in what is now northwestern Pakistan and northeastern Afghanistan. A link text on a third-party page uses the phrase "eastern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan" to point to a Cambridge Now reprint about a Buddhist scroll bought by the University of Washington Libraries. This page covers the region and the manuscripts it produced.
Quick facts
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Region | Northwestern Pakistan and northeastern Afghanistan |
| Core area | Valley of Peshawar |
| Language of the texts | Gandhari, a Middle Indo-Aryan language |
| Script | Kharosthi |
| Writing material | Birch bark scrolls |
| Approximate date | 1st century BCE to 3rd century CE |
The region
Gandhara lay between Central and South Asia. Its core was the Valley of Peshawar, and its cultural reach extended across the Indus to Taxila, west into the Kabul Valley as far as Bamyan, and north toward the Karakoram. It was one of the sixteen mahajanapadas of the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, was annexed by the Achaemenid Empire in the late 6th century BCE, and became part of the Maurya Empire in 321 BCE. Later rulers included the Indo-Greeks, Indo-Scythians, Indo-Parthians and the Kushan Empire, which marked the height of the region's influence.
Gandhara was a major centre of Buddhism, and the religion passed through it along the Silk Road to Central and East Asia. The term faded after the Ghaznavid conquest in the 11th century.
The manuscripts
The Gandharan Buddhist texts are the oldest Buddhist manuscripts yet found, dated from about the 1st century BCE to the 3rd century CE. They are written in Gandhari in the Kharosthi script, mostly on birch bark. Many were stored in clay jars, which helped them survive, though the texts are badly deteriorated. Many of the items are held at the Islamabad Museum, while others were sold to European and Japanese institutions and private buyers and have been studied by several universities.
Major groups include the British Library collection, acquired in 1994, with about eighty fragments from 27 scrolls; the Senior collection, bought by a British collector; and the Schoyen collection, thought to have come from the Bamiyan caves. One further birch-bark manuscript, from the 1st or 2nd century CE and written in a monastery of the Abhidharma tradition, was acquired from a collector by the University of Washington Libraries in 2002. It is an early commentary on the Buddha's teachings on suffering.
Scholarship
The scholar Richard Salomon attributes the British Library scrolls to the Dharmaguptaka sect. Critical editions from the University of Washington and British Library material are published by University of Washington Press in the Gandharan Buddhist Texts series. Salomon has written that sutras make up only a small share of the whole body of texts, especially among the oldest.
Frequently asked questions
Where was Gandhara? In what is now northwestern Pakistan and northeastern Afghanistan, around the Peshawar Valley.
What language are the texts written in? Gandhari, in the Kharosthi script.
How old are they? From about the 1st century BCE to the 3rd century CE.
Which university acquired one of the scrolls? The University of Washington Libraries, in 2002.
Where are many of the manuscripts held? Many are at the Islamabad Museum, and others are in collections abroad.
Sources
Wikipedia articles on Gandhara and the Gandharan Buddhist texts.