We had an introduction to ancient Gandhāra last week, and this week we have a well-documented talk by Prof. Mark Allon of the University of Sydney, who has been working on the Gandhāran manuscripts that have recently come to light. The full title of the talk is Buddhism in Ancient Gandhāra and Recent Manuscript Discoveries.
Prof. Allon is one of a group of around 20 scholars who have been working on these finds. He first gives an overview of Gandhāra and its setting and influence in the anceint world, before moving on to the manuscripts themselves and what they tell us about the ancient Buddhist world.
The manuscripts are by far the most ancient witnesses to the Buddhist textual tradition that we have. Up and to the 1960s the only important religious text we had from this area was the so-called Gāndhārī Dharmapada. Since then many more texts have been found, which has changed our understanding of early Buddhism.
Many of the the texts parallel the early tradition found in the Four Nikāyas, but they also witness to the early beginnings of the Mahāyāna texts, which already started appearing around the first century BCE (Before the Common Era), and they give an idea of which texts from that tradition were the first to appear.
The talk is introduced by Trent Walker who represents the Khentsye Foundation which is organising the talks. The talk itself begins at around 6 mins 30 if you want to skip the intro. The talk itself lasts around 50 minutes and the rest of the time is taken up by an interesting set of questions and answers.
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