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The earliest Buddhist texts were not committed to writing until some centuries after the death of Gautama Buddha. [2] The oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts are the Gandhāran Buddhist texts, found in Pakistan and written in Gāndhārī, [3] [4] they date from the first century BCE to the third century CE. [5]
The manuscripts were written in the Gāndhārī language using the 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, avadanas and Purvayogas, commentaries and abhidharma texts.
The oldest such manuscripts are the numerous Gandhāran Buddhist texts from approximately the 1st century CE, from what is now Afghanistan. They contain among the earliest known versions of significant Buddhist scriptures, including a Dhammapada, discourses of Buddha that include the Rhinoceros Sutra, Avadanas and Abhidharma texts.
He argues that it also incorporates teachings that precede the Buddha, and that the later teachings were memorized by the Buddha's followers while he was still alive. His thesis is based on study of the processes of the first great council, and the methods for memorization used by the monks, which started during the Buddha's lifetime.
A biblical manuscript is any handwritten copy of a portion of the text of the Bible.Biblical manuscripts vary in size from tiny scrolls containing individual verses of the Jewish scriptures (see Tefillin) to huge polyglot codices (multi-lingual books) containing both the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and the New Testament, as well as extracanonical works.
The following is a list of the world's oldest surviving physical documents. Each entry is the most ancient of each language or civilization. For example, the Narmer Palette may be the most ancient from Egypt, but there are many other surviving written documents from Egypt later than the Narmer Palette but still more ancient than the Missal of Silos.
The manuscript was found in 1952 at Jabal Abu Mana near Dishna (Egypt). [12] The preservation level of 𝔓 66 surprised scholars because the first 26 leaves were basically fully intact, and even the stitching of the binding remained.
Most of these preserve "canonical" prose sutras, as well as some biographical material on the Buddha's life associated with the Vinaya. "The Schøyen Manuscripts", discovered in the Bamiyan caves, a collection which preserves Early Buddhist, Abhidharma and Mahayana texts in either Sanskrit or Gandhari.