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The Gandhāran Buddhist texts are the oldest Buddhist manuscripts yet discovered, dating from about the 1st century BCE to 3rd century CE and found in the northwestern outskirts of Pakistan. [1] [2] [3] They represent the literature of Gandharan Buddhism and are written in the Gāndhārī language.
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 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.
The sūtra's manuscript witnesses date to at least c. 184 BCE – c. 46 BCE, making it among the oldest Buddhist manuscripts in existence. [2] [3] The sūtra forms the basis for the expansion and development of the Prajñāpāramitā sūtra literature. [4]
The manuscripts were donated to the British Library in 1994. The entire set of British Library manuscripts are dated to the 1st century CE, although other collections from different institutions contain Kharosthi manuscripts from 1st century BCE to 3rd century CE, [14] [15] making them the oldest Buddhist manuscripts yet discovered.
The oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts are the Gandhāran Buddhist texts, found in Gandhara (corresponding to modern northwestern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan) and written in Gāndhārī, they date from the first century BCE to the third century CE.
Modern discoveries of various fragmentary manuscript collections (the Gandhāran Buddhist texts) from Pakistan and Afghanistan has contributed significantly to the study of Early Buddhist texts. Most of these texts are written in the Gandhari Language and the Kharoṣṭhī script , but some have also been discovered in Bactrian . [ 55 ]
The Gandhāran Buddhist texts (the oldest extant Buddhist manuscripts) are attributed to the Dharmaguptaka sect by Richard Salomon, the leading scholar in the field, and the British Library scrolls "represent a random but reasonably representative fraction of what was probably a much larger set of texts preserved in the library of a monastery ...