GANDHARA. SeeIndia; India, Northwest
GANDHARI, BUDDHIST LITERATURE IN
Gandhar, formerly known as Northwestern Prakrit, is
a Middle Indo-Aryan vernacular of the ancient region
of Gandhara in the northwest of the Indian subconti-
nent around modern Peshawar in northern Pakistan.
Gandharis closely related to its parent language, San-
skrit, and to its sister language, Pali. Gandharwas
written in the Kharosthscript, running from right to
left, unlike all other Indo-Aryan languages that were
written in Brahmscript and its derivatives, which ran
from left to right. In the early centuries of the com-
mon era, Gandharwas used as a religious and ad-
ministrative language over a wide area of South and
Central Asia.
For many years, Gandharwas attested primarily in
Buddhist inscriptions, coin legends, and secular docu-
ments. Only one manuscript of a Buddhist text, the
Gandharl Dharmapada, discovered near Khotan in
Chinese Central Asia in 1892, was known. But in the
1990s, many fragmentary Gandharmanuscripts on
birch bark and palm leaf came to light. Most of these
now belong to three major collections: the British
Library scrolls, the Senior scrolls, and the Schøyen
fragments. These texts are still being studied and pub-
lished, so that knowledge of Buddhist literature in
Gandharis at a preliminary stage. But the texts clearly
show that, as previously suspected, Gandharwas one
of the major Buddhist languages, with an extensive lit-
erature that probably constituted one or more inde-
pendent canons or proto-canons.
The Gandharmanuscripts date from about the first
to third centuries C.E. They include the oldest surviv-
ing manuscript remains of any Buddhist tradition and
present a unique source for the study of the formation
of Buddhist literature. Although the circumstances of
their discoveries are not well documented, most of the
manuscripts apparently came from Buddhist monas-
tic sites in eastern Afghanistan, such as Hadda and
BAMIYAN, where they were buried in clay pots or other
containers.The twenty-nine British Library scrolls constitute a
diverse collection of texts and genres written in vari-
ous hands and formats. The most prominent genres
are legends (AVADANAor purvayoga), sutras, scholastic
and ABHIDHARMAtexts, and commentaries on groups
of verses. The Senior collection, consisting of twenty-
four scrolls, is more unitary in that all of the manu-
scripts were written by the same scribe and most of
them are sutras. The Schøyen fragments comprise over
one hundred small remnants from miscellaneous texts,
very few of which had been identified as of 2002.Gandhar sutras include versions of well-known
texts such as the Rhinoceros Sutra(Pali, Khaggavisana-
sutta) and the San ̇glti-sutra,both in the British Library
collection. The same collection also includes a frag-
ment of a group of short sutras arranged on a numer-
ical basis, like the An ̇guttaranikayaof the Pali canon
and Ekottarikagamaof the Sanskrit canon. Among the
many sutras in the Senior collection are Gandharver-
sions of the Samaññaphala-sutta,which is part of the
Dlghanikayain the Pali canon, and of the Culagosin ̇ga-
sutta of the Pali Majjhimanikaya,as well as several oth-
ers that correspond to Samyuttanikayasuttas, such as
the Veludvareyya-suttaand Parilaha-sutta.The Schøyen299