G?NDH?R?, BUDDHIST LITERATURE IN

G?ndh?r?, formerly known as Northwestern Prakrit, is a Middle Indo-Aryan vernacular of the ancient region of Gandh?ra in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent around modern Peshawar in northern Pakistan. G?ndh?r? is closely related to its parent language, Sanskrit, and to its sister language, P?li. G?ndh?r? was written in the Kharo??h? script, running from right to left, unlike all other Indo-Aryan languages that were written in Br?hm? script and its derivatives, which ran from left to right. In the early centuries of the common era, G?ndh?r? was used as a religious and administrative language over a wide area of South and Central Asia.

For many years, G?ndh?r? was attested primarily in Buddhist inscriptions, coin legends, and secular documents. Only one manuscript of a Buddhist text, the G?ndh?r?Dharmapada, discovered near Khotan in Chinese Central Asia in 1892, was known. But in the 1990s, many fragmentary G?ndh?r? manuscripts 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 published, so that knowledge of Buddhist literature in G?ndh?r? is at a preliminary stage. But the texts clearly show that, as previously suspected, G?ndh?r? was one of the major Buddhist languages, with an extensive literature that probably constituted one or more independent canons or proto-canons.

The G?ndh?r? manuscripts date from about the first to third centuries c.e. They include the oldest surviving 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 monastic sites in eastern Afghanistan, such as Hadda and B?miy?n, 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 various hands and formats. The most prominent genres are legends (avad?na or p?rvayoga), s?tras, scholastic and abhidharma texts, and commentaries on groups of verses. The Senior collection, consisting of twenty-four scrolls, is more unitary in that all of the manuscripts were written by the same scribe and most of them are s?tras. The Schøyen fragments comprise over one hundred small remnants from miscellaneous texts, very few of which had been identified as of 2002.

G?ndh?r? s?tras include versions of well-known texts such as the Rhinoceros s?tra (P?li, Khaggavis??a-sutta) and the Sa?g?ti-s?tra, both in the British Library collection. The same collection also includes a fragment of a group of short s?tras arranged on a numerical basis, like the A?guttaranik?ya of the P?li canon and Ekott?rikagama of the Sanskrit canon. Among the many s?tras in the Senior collection are G?ndh?r? versions of the S?maññaphala-sutta, which is part of the d?ghanik?ya in the P?li canon, and of the C??agosi?ga-sutta of the P?li Majjhimanik?ya, as well as several others that correspond to Sa?yuttanik?ya suttas, such as the Ve?udv?reyya-sutta and Pari??ha-sutta. The Schøyen collection includes fragments of a G?ndh?r? version of the Mah?parinirv??a-s?tra.

The G?ndh?r? s?tras are broadly similar to the parallel texts in P?li, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan, but they differ significantly in structure, contents, and wording. The same is true of G?ndh?r? versions of other canonical or paracanonical texts, such as the Dharmapada (P?li, Dhammapada), which is attested both in the Khotan Dharmapada scroll and in a small fragment in the British Library collection. The paracanonical Songs of Lake Anavatapta (Anavataptag?th?) is similarly preserved in two fragmentary scrolls in the British Library and Senior collections.

But the majority of the G?ndh?r? texts have no known parallels in other Buddhist traditions, and many of them are evidently peculiar to the Gandh?ran regional tradition. For example, several of the British Library avad?nas are marked as local literature by references to historical figures of Gandh?ra, such as the Great Satrap Jihonika. Such references provide important clues for the dating of these texts in or around the first century c.e. In general, the G?ndh?r? avad?nas and p?rvayogas are characterized by an extremely terse style, indicating that they are summaries of longer stories, designed to serve as mnemonic aids for expanded oral presentations. This makes them difficult to interpret when no parallels are available.

The abhidharma and other scholastic texts in the British Library and Schøyen collections also have few, if any, direct parallels, and thus appear to be products of local monastic scholarship that were not preserved in the Buddhist literatures of other regions. Prominent in the British Library collection are commentaries on series of verses of the type that in other Buddhist literatures are found in texts such as the Sutta-nip?ta, Dhammapada, and Therag?th?. But the selection and ordering of these verses is peculiar to these texts, and as yet is not clearly understood.

The doctrinal content of the G?ndh?r? Buddhist literature is consistently representative of mainstream or H?nay?na Buddhism. With a few possible exceptions among the Schøyen fragments, which represent a slightly later phase of G?ndh?r? literature, they contain no reference to Mah?y?na texts or ideas. Although it is difficult to identify specific sectarian affiliations for many of the G?ndh?r? texts, at least some of the British Library scrolls probably represent the literature of the Dharmaguptaka school, since they were found inside a pot that bore a dedicatory inscription to that school. A Dharmaguptaka affiliation is also supported by the British Library Sa?g?tis?tra, which is similar to the version of the same s?tra preserved in the Chinese D?rgh?gama (Chang ahan jing), which is probably a Dharmaguptaka collection.

The discovery of extensive remains of a Buddhist literature in G?ndh?r?, hitherto almost entirely unknown, provides support for the long-standing "G?ndh?r? hypothesis," according to which many of the earliest Chinese Buddhist translations were derived from Gandh?ran archetypes. This confirms that Gandh?ra was the principal jumping-off point for the spread of Buddhism from its Indian homeland into Central Asia and China.

See also:India, Northwest; Mainstream Buddhist Schools; P?li, Buddhist Literature in; Sanskrit, Buddhist Literature in

Bibliography

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Allon, Mark, and Salomon, Richard. "Kharo??h?Fragments of a G?ndh?r? Version of the Mah?parinirv??as?tra." In Buddhist Manuscripts, vol. 1, ed. Jens Braarvig. Oslo, Norway: Hermes, 2000.

Boucher, Daniel. "G?ndh?r? and the Early Chinese Buddhist Translations Reconsidered: The Case of the Saddharma-pu??ar?kas?tra." Journal of the American Oriental Society 118, no. 4 (1998): 471–506.

Brough, John, ed. The G?ndh?r?Dharmapada. London: Oxford University Press, 1962.

Fussman, Gérard. "G?ndh?r? écrite, G?ndh?r? parlée." In Dialectes dans les littératures indo-aryennes, ed. Colette Caillat. Paris: Collège de France, l'Institut de Civilisation Indienne, 1989.

Konow, Sten, ed. Kharosh?h?Inscriptions, with the Exception of Those of A?oka, Vol. 2, part 1: Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum. Calcutta: Government of India, 1929.

Lenz, Timothy. A New Version of the G?ndh?r?Dharmapada and a Collection of Previous-Birth Stories: British Library Kharo??h?Fragments 16 and 25. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002.

Salomon, Richard. "Kharo??h? Manuscript Fragments in the Pelliot Collection, Bibliothèque Nationale de France." Bulletin d'Études Indiennes 16 (1998): 123–160.

Salomon, Richard. Ancient Buddhist Scrolls from Gandh?ra: The British Library Kharo??h?Fragments. London: British Library; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999.

Salomon, Richard. A G?ndh?r?Version of the Rhinoceros s?tra: British Library Kharo??h?Fragment 5B. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000.

Richard Salomon