Gandharan Manuscripts and Buddhist History

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The Gandharan Buddhist manuscripts are leading scholars to rethink the origins of Mahayana Buddhism. Richard Salomon looks at what we can learn from the recently-unearthed texts. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Muneichi Nitta, 2003, ACC No: 2003.593.1. More than twenty years have passed since twenty-eight fragile birch bark scrolls, now known to be the oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts in the world, came to light. Dating back to as early as the first century BCE, the 1st century CE to 3rd century CE[1][2], the scrolls—originating in the ancient kingdom of Gandhara, which once straddled the border between present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan—predate the earliest Pali manuscripts by several centuries. Since that initial discovery, hundreds of similar manuscripts and fragments have been recovered, all from the same region. Buddhist academics in several countries in North America, Europe, and Asia have engagedin arduous study of the Gandharan manuscripts, the contents of which have been the subject of eight books and innumerable articles. But what does the discovery of these relics mean forBuddhist practitioners? Are they merely a matter of academic interest, or do they have thepotential to shift our understanding of the original message of the Buddha in some fundamental way? Will they compel us to abandon or modify long-cherished Buddhist ideas and practice or present us with previously unimagined revelations about the Buddha’s message? The short answer to such que[...x]