The Bajaur Collection of Buddhist Kharosthi Manuscripts (DFG)

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June 27, 2008, 9.00 AM: The Gāndhārī Vinaya Texts of the Bajaur Collection (Ingo Strauch)

XVth Congress of the International Association of Buddhist Studies , Emory University, Atlanta

06/27/2008

Abstract

It is a well known fact that Vinaya texts – in particular the core texts Prātimokṣasūtra and Karmavācanā -  belong to the earliest strata of Buddhist textual traditions. Consequently, it was always a matter of discussion that they are not represented in the early corpora of Buddhist manuscripts: neither among the Central Asian and North-Western Kuṣāṇa Brāhmī manuscripts and nor among the Gāndhārī collections known so far. This has led to the theory that these texts were mainly subject to oral tradition until they were eventually fixed in a written way not earlier than the 4th century AD.

Regarding the early history of these texts this state of being was of course unsatisfactory. Especially the diversity of textual traditions which are represented by a number of different versions of Prātimokṣasūtras and Karmavācanā formulae attributable to different schools demanded more ancient sources for tracing the development and interrelationship of this important class of Buddhist texts.

This gap can now be partially filled. Among the recently discovered Kharoṣṭhī manuscripts from Bajaur (North Western Frontier Province, Pakistan) which are being studied in the „Bajaur Collection Project“ at Freie Universität Berlin we could identify two fragments of Vinaya related texts. One of them is a small remnant of a collection of Karmavācanā formulae, the other contains two different versions of the beginning of the Naiḥsargika-Pātayantika section of the Prātimokṣasūtra. According to their palaeography, they should be dated into the late first, early second century AD.

The paper will present the results of the reconstruction of both fragments and discuss their relationship to the known Vinaya traditions.