The Bajaur Collection of Buddhist Kharosthi Manuscripts (DFG)

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Grafischer Identitätsbereich:

Suche auf der Website http://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de

• About the collection
• Catalogue of manuscripts
• Texts and genres
• Palaeography
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About the collection

Amount and condition

The Bajaur collection comprises altogether fragments from ca. 18 different birch-bark scrolls, written by at least 19 different scribes. The largest scroll (fragment 2) is more than 220 cm long, while the shortest birch bark fragment measures only about 6 cm (fragment 7). Similarly heterogeneous is the fragments’ state of preservation. While some scrolls are almost completely preserved, many of them miss one side. A few are almost entirely broken into many small fragments.

Provenance

According to the original statement of the owner, the collection was found in the ruins of a Buddhist monastery known today under the name Mahal and situated according to Nasim Khan’s description "in the Bajaur area in the entrance of a narrow valley opposite to Mian Kili village (District Dir) on the right side of Bajaur river known as Rud" (Nasim Khan & Sohail Khan 2004 (2006):10). The Mian Kili mentioned here can be identified with the place situated at 34° 49' 24" North, 71° 40' 17" East on the left side of the river.

     

Map of Gandhara with Mian Kili                          Surroundings of Mian Kili (source: Google Earth)
(courtesy: John Huntington, Hunt. Archive)

Some time after the discovery, in 1999, the manuscripts were brought to M. Nasim Khan who kept them for conservation and further studies in the Department of Archaeology of the University of Peshawar. As Nasim Khan wrote, the manuscripts were deposited in a "single large cardboard box" when brought to his office.
According to the owner, however, they "were found in situ placed in a square chamber of stone slabs of about half a meter of diameter. The chamber was found in one of the cell(s) of the monastery" (Nasim Khan & Sohail Khan 2004(2006): 10). Obviously, the Bajaur manuscripts were not ritually buried but stored in a room within the precincts of a Buddhist monastery.

Restoration and works so far

In the years following the discovery the scrolls were unrolled and basically restored by M. Nasim Khan and his team at the University of Peshawar (cf. Nasim Khan & Sohail Khan 2004 (2006): 10-12). The main restoration process was finished in 2005 and resulted in the preservation of the scrolls within 35 glass frames. All of these frames are part of a private collection which is presently kept in the premises of the Department of Archaeology of the University of Peshawar for research purposes.

Since October 2005 the collection has been studied in the framework of a project sponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). This project was in its initial phase from 2005 till 2007 part of a more comprehensive cooperation between the Department of Archaeology of the University of Peshawar and the Freie Universität Berlin („Pak-German projects“).

       

Inside of the card box with manuscripts in their original condition (photographies: Nasim Khan)

Cf. Strauch 2007-08: 4-7, ch. 1.

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