Gandhāran Buddhist texts

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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. They represent the literature of Gandharan Buddhism and are written in the Gandhārī language, Middle Indo-Aryan Prakrit. The texts constitute the largest collection of Gandhārī manuscripts known to date. Many of manuscripts are now housed at the Islamabad Museum in Pakistan. Some 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 being 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 Pāli and Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit versions of texts. Other Gandhāran Buddhist texts — "several and perhaps many" — have been found over the last two centuries...

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