A Gandhara Buddha Statue
A fragment of Buddha's teachings
- AP picture (computer enhanced)
The
British Library / University of Washington Early Buddhist
Manuscripts Project was founded in September 1996 in order
to promote the study, editing, and publication of a unique
collection of fifty-seven fragments of Buddhist manuscripts
on birch bark scrolls, written in the Kharosthi script and
the Gandhari (Prakrit) language that were acquired by the
British Library in 1994. The manuscripts date from, most likely,
the first century A.D., and as such are the oldest surviving
Buddhist texts, which promise to provide unprecedented insights
into the early history of Buddhism in north India and in central
and east Asia.
Extract from
an article by Dalya Alberge
The British Library
has discovered remarkable manuscript fragments which it says
may be as significant for Buddhist scholars as the Dead Sea
Scrolls are for Christianity and Judaism. The manuscripts,
birchbark scrolls that look like "badly rolled up cigars"
when first shown to the library, are believed to be the earliest
surviving Buddhist text. The exact origin is unknown beyond
that they were probably found in Afghanistan in earthen jars.
"These will
allow scholars to get nearer to what Buddha said than ever
before,"the deputy director of the library's Oriental
and Indian Office Collection, Mr Graham Shaw said. They date
from the end of the first century AD or the beginning of the
second century AD. Apart from bringing scholars closer to
the original language of the Buddha, this could corroborate
the authenticity of teachings recounted in later text.
The manuscripts
include 60 fragments, ranging from the Buddha's sermons to
poems and treatises on the psychology of perception. The library
acquired them 18 months ago from a British dealer. "Their
value was incalculable", Mr Shaw said. " How would
you put a value on the Dead Sea Scrolls?" It is believed
they are part of the long-lost canon of the Sarvastivadin
Sect that dominated Gandhara - modern north Pakistan and east
Afghanistan - and was instrumental in Buddhism's spread into
central and east Asia.
Gandhara was one
of the greatest ancient centres of Buddhism. Mr Shaw explained:
"The scrolls tell us something about the way Buddhists
passed on the teachings, which were for a long time passed
on orally." After the Buddha's death, his disciples are
said to have gathered in assemblies where they recited his
sermons and organised them into what came to be the Buddhist
canon.
Although nothing
is known of their provenance, their attribution has been confirmed
by the University of Seattle's Professor Richard Salomon,
one of the world's greatest scholars of Kharosthi - a script
derived from the Aramaic alphabet that was restricted to a
small area of India. They were, he said, "the Dead Sea
Scrolls of Buddhism". Years of study lay ahead before
the text can be deciphered, analysed and compared with existing
texts.
The fragments include
tales told on Lake Anavatapata's banks at an assembly of the
Buddha and his disciples. Another is one of the Buddha's sermons
on the rhinoceros horn (Suttanipata). "The rhinoceros
and its horn in particular is a symbol of non-attachment to
material things ... it is not a herd animal. It just wanders
alone."
The
Times
