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42-566: They 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 is 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

84-628: A Buddhist monastery of the Abhidharma tradition, from the 1st or 2nd century CE, was acquired from a collector by the University of Washington Libraries in 2002. It is an early commentary on the Buddha's teachings, on the subject of human suffering. In 2003, the Library of Congress purchased a scroll from a British antiquities dealer. Called the "Bahubuddha Sutra", or "The Many Buddhas Sutra",

126-506: A Western collection, while others went to a Government agency and yet other parts may still be with the private owner. The earliest manuscript from Split collection is the one that contains a series of Avadana tales, mentioning a king and Ajivikas, and Buddhist sects like Dharmaguptakas, Mahasamghikas and Seriyaputras, as well as persons like Upatisya and the thief Aṅgulimāla who gets advice from his wife in Pataliputra. This manuscript

168-600: A commentary. About the "Split" collection, Harry Falk writes: The local origins of the present collection are not clear. Several part[s] of it were seen in Peshawar in 2004. According to usually reliable informants the collection of birch-barks was found in a stone case in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area, comprising the Mohmand Agency and Bajaur. It was split on arrival and some parts are now in

210-531: A considerable consistency of content, although each recension contains sutras/suttas not found in the others. The Collation and Annotation of Saṃyuktāgama (《<雜阿含經>校釋》,Chinese version) makes further comparison. Bhante Sujato , a contemporary scholar monk, argues that the remarkable congruence of the various recensions suggests that the Samyutta Nikaya/Saṃyukta Āgama was the only collection to be finalized in terms of both structure and content in

252-483: A few common and popular texts, mostly belonging to Kṣudraka / Khuddaka type of material. Richard Salomon, quoting Anne Blackburn , considers them to be part of a limited “practical canon” used in Gandharan monasteries, he concludes that by comparing them to Sanskrit manuscripts from Xinjiang and katikāvatas instructions from Sri Lankan material. Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit ( BHS )

294-506: A form of "mixed Sanskrit" in which the original Prakrit has been incompletely Sanskritised, with the phonetic forms being changed to the Sanskrit versions, but the grammar of Prakrit being retained. For instance, Prakrit bhikkhussa , the possessive singular of bhikkhu (monk, cognate with Sanskrit bhikṣu ) is converted not to bhikṣoḥ as in Sanskrit but mechanically changed to bhikṣusya . The term owes its usage and definition largely to

336-610: A form of pali. However, Franklin Edgerton states that Pāli is in essence a Prakrit . In many places where BHS differs from Sanskrit it is closer to, or identical with, Pāli . Most extant BHS works were originally written in BHS, rather than being reworkings or translations of already existing works in Pāli or other languages. However, earlier works, mostly from the Mahāsāṃghika school, use

378-485: A group of some eighty Gandharan manuscript fragments from the first half of the 1st century CE, encompassing twenty‐seven birch‐bark scrolls. These birch bark manuscripts were stored in clay jars, which preserved them. They are thought to have been found in western Pakistan , the location of Gandhara , buried in ancient monasteries . A team has been at work, trying to decipher the manuscripts: several volumes have appeared to date (see below). The manuscripts were written in

420-471: A large proportion of these words; in Edgerton's view, this seems to prove that most of them belong to the special vocabulary of the protocanonical Buddhist Prakrit. Not all Buddhist use of Sanskrit is in a hybrid form. Some translated works, such as by the Sarvāstivādin school, were completed in classical Sanskrit. There were also later works composed directly in Sanskrit and written in a simpler style than

462-799: A late period, belong to a continuous and broadly unitary linguistic tradition. The language of these works is separate from the tradition of Brahmanical Sanskrit, and goes back ultimately to a semi-Sanskritized form of the protocanonical Prakrit. The peculiar Buddhist vocabulary of BHS is evidence that BHS is subordinate to a separate linguistic tradition quite separate from standard Sanskrit (Edgerton finds other indications as well). The Buddhist Brahmanical writers who used standard Brahmanical Sanskrit were small in number. This group seems to have been made up of converts who received Brahmanical training in their youth before converting to Buddhism, such as Asvaghosa . Many Sanskrit words, or particular uses of Sanskrit words, are recorded only from Buddhist works. Pāli shares

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504-605: A unified, cohesive, and at least partially intact collection that was carefully interred as such. He further reports that the "largest number of parallels for the sutras in the Senior collection are in the Saṃyutta Nikāya and the corresponding collections in Sanskrit and Chinese." The Buddhist works within the Schøyen collection consist of birch bark , palm leaf and vellum manuscripts. They are thought to have been found in

546-611: A well-developed movement in the vein of Pure Land Buddhism. While the majority of the texts in the collection are Buddhist texts, two non-Buddhist works are included in the form of a loan contract and an Arthasastra /Rajnitit text, one of the few known Sanskrit texts composed using the Kharosthi script. Scholarly critical editions of the texts of the University of Washington and the British Library are being printed by

588-510: Is a modern linguistic category applied to the language used in a class of Indian Buddhist texts, such as the Perfection of Wisdom sutras . BHS is classified as a Middle Indo-Aryan language . It is sometimes called "Buddhist Sanskrit" or "Mixed Sanskrit". Prior to Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit teachings used to be generally recorded in the Pali language . Pali language was common at the time of

630-576: Is an inscription on a jar pointing to that school, and there is some textual evidence as well. On a semi-related point, the Gandhāran text of the Rhinoceros Sutra contains the word mahayaṇaṣa , which some might identify with " Mahayana ." However, according to Salomon, in Kharoṣṭhī orthography there is no reason to think that the phrase in question, amaṃtraṇa bhoti mahayaṇaṣa ("there are calls from

672-540: Is assumed to be in the Gāndhārī language. Comparison with the standard Sanskrit text shows that it is also likely to be a translation from Gāndhāri as it expands on many phrases and provides glosses for words that are not present in the Gāndhārī. This points to the text being composed in Gāndhārī, the language of Gandhāra (in what is now the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, including Peshawar , Taxila and

714-472: Is characteristic of the Kaniska era from which they derive. There is a "strong likelihood that the Senior scrolls were written, at the earliest, in the latter part of the first century A.D., or, perhaps more likely, in the first half of the second century. This would make the Senior scrolls slightly but significantly later than the scrolls of the British Library collection, which have been provisionally dated to

756-597: Is currently held in three glass frames covering around 300 fragments, and the style of handwriting has affinities to Ashokan period. A small fragment was subjected to radiocarbon analysis at the Leibnitz Labor in Kiel, Germany, in 2007, the result was that it is from sometime between 184 BCE and 46 BCE (95.4% probability, two sigma range), and the youngest peak is around 70 BCE, so this reconsideration puts this manuscript, that Harry Falk calls " An Avadana collection ", into

798-576: Is not distinct enough from Sanskrit to comprise a separate linguistic category. Edgerton writes that a reader of a Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit text "will rarely encounter forms or expressions which are definitely ungrammatical, or at least more ungrammatical than, say, the Sanskrit of the epics, which also violates the strict rules of Pāṇini. Yet every paragraph will contain words and turns of expression which, while formally unobjectionable ... would never be used by any non-Buddhist writer." Edgerton holds that nearly all Buddhist works in Sanskrit, at least until

840-593: The Bamiyan caves of Afghanistan, where refugees were seeking shelter. Most of these manuscripts were bought by a Norwegian collector, named Martin Schøyen , while smaller quantities are in possession of Japanese collectors. These manuscripts date from the second to the 8th century CE. In addition to texts in Gandhāri, the Schøyen collection also contains important early sutric material in Sanskrit. The Buddhist texts within

882-606: The Buddha . His teachings were apparently first found in Pali language written by Theravada buddhist. Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit became the pre-eminent language for literature and philosophy in India. Buddhist monks developed this language they used to it while remaining under the influence of a linguistic tradition stemming from the proto-canonical Prakrit of the early oral tradition. While there are widely differing theories regarding

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924-703: The Gāndhārī language using the Kharoṣṭhī script and are therefore sometimes also called the Kharoṣṭhī Manuscripts . The collection is composed of a diversity of texts: a Dhammapada , discourses of the Buddha such as the Rhinoceros Sutra , avadanas and Purvayogas , commentaries and abhidharma texts. There is evidence to suggest that these texts may belong to the Dharmaguptaka school. There

966-755: The Saṃyukta Āgama found in the Sutra Pitikas of various Sanskritic early Buddhists schools , fragments of which survive in Sanskrit and in Tibetan translation. A complete Chinese translation from the Sarvāstivādin recension appears in the Chinese Buddhist canon , where it is known as the Zá Āhánjīng (雜阿含經); meaning "the mixed agama ". A comparison of the Sarvāstivādin, Kāśyapīya, and Theravadin texts reveals

1008-625: The Swat Valley ). The "Split" ms. is evidently a copy of an earlier text, confirming that the text may date before the first century of the common era. The Bajaur Collection was discovered in 1999, and is believed to be from the ruins of a Buddhist monastery in the Dir District of Pakistan. The name derives from the Bajaur district , whose boundary with the Dir district is marked by the banks of

1050-672: The Gandhārī Prakrit was discovered near Khotan in Xinjiang , western China . It was broken up and came to Europe in parts, some going to Russia and some to France , but unfortunately a portion of the manuscript never appeared on the market and seems to have been lost. In 1898 most of the French material was published in the Journal Asiatique . In 1962 John Brough published the collected Russian and French fragments with

1092-533: The Kharosthi script. The fragments were fixed in frames and used to produce high-quality digital images at the University of Peshawar , with collaboration with the Freie University of Berlin . Notable texts from the collection include the earliest identified Vinaya text, in the form of a Pratimoksa sutra, and a relatively complete Mahayana text connected with the Buddha Aksobhya showing

1134-770: The Schøyen collection include fragments of canonical Suttas , Abhidharma, Vinaya, and Mahāyāna texts. Most of these manuscripts are written in the Brahmi scripts, while a small portion is written in Gandhāri/ Kharoṣṭhī script. Among the early Dharmaguptaka texts in the Schøyen Collection is a fragment in the Kharoṣṭhī script referencing the Six Pāramitās , a central practice for bodhisattvas in Mahāyāna Buddhism. One more manuscript, written on birch bark in

1176-645: The University of Washington Press in the "Gandhāran Buddhist Texts" series, beginning with a detailed analysis of the Gāndhārī Rhinoceros Sutra including phonology , morphology , orthography , paleography , etc. Material from the Schøyen Collection is published by Hermes Publishing, Oslo, Norway. The following scholars have published fragments of the Gandhāran manuscripts: Raymond Allchin , Mark Allon, Mark Barnard, Stefan Baums, John Brough, Harry Falk , Andrew Glass, Mei‐huang Lee, Timothy Lenz, Sergey Oldenburg , Richard Salomon and Émile Senart . Some of

1218-489: The classical literature, as well as works of kavya in the ornate classical style such as the Buddhacarita . The terms "Buddhist Hybrid Chinese" and "Buddhist Hybrid English" have been used to describe peculiar styles of language used in translations of Buddhist texts. Sa%E1%B9%83yutta Nik%C4%81ya The Saṃyutta Nikāya ("Connected Discourses" or "Kindred Sayings") is a Buddhist scriptures collection ,

1260-566: The first century BCE. In 2012, Harry Falk and Seishi Karashima published a damaged and partial Kharoṣṭhī manuscript of the Mahāyāna Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra . It is carbon dated to ca. 75 CE (with a two-sigma range of 47-147 CE), making it one of the oldest Buddhist texts in existence. It is very similar to the first Chinese translation of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā by Lokakṣema (ca. 179 CE) whose source text

1302-418: The first half of the first century." Salomon writes: The Senior collection is superficially similar in character to the British Library collection in that they both consist of about two dozen birch bark manuscripts or manuscript fragments arranged in scroll or similar format and written in Kharosthi script and Gandhari language. Both were found inside inscribed clay pots, and both are believed to have come from

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1344-602: The last two centuries but lost or destroyed. The texts are attributed to the Dharmaguptaka sect by Richard Salomon , the leading scholar in the field, and the British Library scrolls "represent a random but reasonably representative fraction of what was probably a much larger set of texts preserved in the library of a monastery of the Dharmaguptaka sect in Nagarāhāra ." In 1994, the British Library acquired

1386-503: The multitude"), has any connection to the Mahayana. The Senior collection was bought by Robert Senior, a British collector. The Senior collection may be slightly younger than the British Library collection. It consists almost entirely of canonical sutras, and, like the British Library collection, was written on birch bark and stored in clay jars. The jars bear inscriptions referring to Macedonian rather than ancient Indian month names, as

1428-446: The published material is listed below: First studies of these Gandharan manuscripts in 1990’s seemed to show that Sūtra texts were prominent in these collections, but subsequent research showed that such a situation was not evident. Now researchers, like Richard Salomon , consider that Buddhist discourses (sūtras) are actually a small portion of the whole Gandharan texts, especially in the oldest period. These early sūtras tend to be only

1470-473: The relationship of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit to Pali , but it is certain that Pāli is much closer to Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit than any other languages in india . Norman K. is a scholar known for his work on Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit and Pali. His works mainly focus on understanding early Buddhist texts and their development comparing Pali, Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit and Prakrit languages. According to K. R. Norman , Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit could also be considered

1512-428: The river where the monastery was situated. The collection comprises fragments of 19 birch-bark scrolls and contains approximately 22 different texts. Most of the texts are not the work of the same scribe, with as many as 18 different hands identified. The fragments range from small sections only a few centimeters in length to a nearly complete scroll nearly 2m long. It is dated to the 1st-2nd Century CE, and written using

1554-414: The same genre, namely sutra. Moreover, whereas all of the British Library scrolls were fragmentary and at least some of them were evidently already damaged and incomplete before they were interred in antiquity,} some of the Senior scrolls are still more or less complete and intact and must have been in good condition when they were buried. Thus the Senior scrolls, unlike the British Library scrolls, constitute

1596-430: The same or nearby sites, in or around Hadda in eastern Afghanistan. But in terms of their textual contents, the two collections differ in important ways. Whereas the British Library collection was a diverse mixture of texts of many different genres written by some two dozen different scribes, all or nearly all of the manuscripts in the Senior collection are written in the same hand, and all but one of them seem to belong to

1638-489: The scholarship of Franklin Edgerton. Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit is primarily studied in the modern world in order to study the Buddhist teachings that it records, and to study the development of Indo-Aryan languages. Compared to Pāli and Classical Sanskrit, comparatively little study has been made of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, in part because of the fewer available writings, and in part because of the view of some scholars that BHS

1680-467: The scroll arrived in pieces in a pen case but retains 80% of the text with the beginning and ending missing due to age. The content is similar to the " Mahāvastu ." They mostly contain educational content.The text is narrated by Gautama Buddha and "tells the story of the 13 Buddhas who preceded him, his own emergence and the prediction of a future Buddha." In 1892 a copy of the Dhammapada written in

1722-639: The third of the five Nikāyas , or collections, in the Sutta Pitaka , which is one of the "three baskets" that compose the Pali Tipitaka of Theravada Buddhism . Because of the abbreviated way parts of the text are written, the total number of suttas/sūtras is unclear. The editor of the Pali Text Society edition of the text made it 2889, Bodhi in his translation has 2904, while the commentaries give 7762. A study by Rupert Gethin gives

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1764-537: The totals for the Burmese and Sinhalese editions as 2854 and 7656, respectively, and his own calculation as 6696; he also says the total in the Thai edition is unclear. The suttas/sūtras are grouped into five vargas/vaggas , or sections. Each varga/vagga is further divided into samyuttas/saṃyuktas , or chapters, each of which in turn contains a group of suttas/sūtras on a related topic. The Samyutta Nikaya corresponds to

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