The great significance of the Buddhist manuscripts written on the bark of the bola tree in Gandhara.VIETNAMESE TRANSLATE ENGLISH BY=VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST NUN=THICH CHAN TANH. From the last century, people have found scattered the oldest Buddhist scriptures (manuscripts) written in Kharosthi script buried in Buddhist monuments in Gandhāra, Northern Afghanistan. The ancient scriptures originated in Gandhara, an ancient Buddhist region in northern Afghanistan and Pakistan. But it was not until September 1994, after the Taliban insurgents destroyed the two great Buddha statues at Bamiyan Gandhāra, that an anonymous visitor sent three terracotta kilns containing 27 Buddhist scriptures written in Kharosthi script on the bark of a bhoja tree. -patra for the British Library, only Buddhist researchers discovered the importance of these manuscripts. The British Library and the University of Washington consortium quickly established the "Bristish Library/ University of Washington Early Buddhist Manuscripts Poject (EBMP) Project" with the aim of researching the source of Buddhist texts. precious ancient material written in Kharosthi script Not only research and publishing, EBMP also trains a whole class of PhD students and post-doctoral students to prepare for the continuation of a long-term research program. After twenty years of operation, EBMP has become a prestigious place where world scholars can collaborate and share research efforts on ancient Buddhist texts. The first is to share the source of the Buddhist scriptures in Gandhāra written in the ancient Kharosthi script that many years ago have scattered around the world. In summary, in addition to the British Library Collection, (Gandharan Buddhist Texts) The Senior Collection is a collection of British researchers named Robert Senior. Compared to the British Library Collection, this collection is also made of birch bark and housed in an earthenware jar, but is newer. Salomon says it was written slightly later than the London Library collection (ie, around the end of the first century) (1). The good thing about this collection, however, is that instead of containing many passages, the Senior Collection includes the entire sutta. Senior has more than 20 Gandhāra bark texts, also written in Kharosthi script, in terracotta jars and probably buried in ancient texts close to the British Library Collection. Salomon introduced: “While the British Library Collection is written in many freestyles and by many people, the Senior Collection seems to use only one style because it is written by only one person. If the British Library Collection is fragmented and seemingly incomplete, the Senior text appears to have been perfect before being buried” (2). Finally and most importantly, Salomon reports that much of the literature in the Senior is the same as that found in the Theravada's Saṃyutta Nikāya and the Chinese Tripitaka. This shows that the Kanji Kanji Conjecture does not translate from Sanskrit as many people previously thought, but from the local language called Gandhārī Prākrit (remember the Brahmi and Kharosthi scripts are used to write the Prākrit common language). The region of Gandhāra (called Gandhārī Prākrit) first and then later used to write Sanskrit - infers that many canonical texts may be older than Pāli and Sanskrit because Pali was contemporaneous with Sanskrit but after Ashoka (reigned 272 -236 BC) people just used Kharosthi and Brahmi scripts to write Sanskrit and Pāli (3). 2. Schøyen . Collection The Schøyen Collection was originally a collection of Swedish collector Martin Schøyen of a number of Buddhist scriptures written on bark, leaves and leather dating from the second to eighth centuries, from the caves of Bamiyan Gandhāra. Most of these Buddhist scriptures were purchased by Schøyen, the rest were purchased by other Japanese collectors. The language of the sutras is the common Gandhāra (Gandhārī Prākrit) but there is also an additional part of the Sanskrit literature of Mahayana Buddhism. Most of this collection is written in Brahmi with only a portion written in Kharosthi script (the Brahmi script is contemporaneous with Kharosthi script and is a precursor to Siddham). The special part of the Schøyen collection is in the Kharosthi texts identified as belonging to the Dharmaguptaka, which deals with the teaching of the Six Perfections (ṣādpāramitā) which is the basic teaching of the Bodhisattvas. of Mahayana Buddhism (5). Currently, the Mahayana schools are studying the Four Laws (四分律) - translated by Buddha-da-da-sa and Truc Phat Nien - which is also the sutra of the Dharma Store. 3. University of Washington Collection After the establishment of the "Early Buddhist Texts Research Project" (EBMP), the University of Washington also tried to procure more ancient Buddhist documents for this project. In 2002, the University of Washington Library also acquired a collection of birch bark Buddhist scriptures written between the first and second centuries. This is the text of the monasteries of the traditional period of 18 sects. The contents of this collection are the Abhidharma's discussions on Suffering (Duhkha) in the Four Noble Truths. 4. Collections of the Library of Congress A portion of the Gandhara scroll from the Library of Congress. A portion of the Gandhara scroll from the Library of Congress. In 2003, the Library of Congress also purchased a birch bark Buddhist scroll, but it was broken into small pieces, put in a fountain pen case, so it lost the beginning and the end. only about 80 percent of the content remains - the document is well shredded to keep it hidden during a time when the Gandhāra area is a black market for international archaeologists mixed with antique dealers and diggers neck. This is a sutra called the Bahubuddha Sutra, a sutra like the "Mahāvastu" that talks about the Buddha's past lives as well as the way to practice the Ten Grounds of Bodhisattva in the Lokattara-vāda sutras. ) one of the 18 sects of the Abhidhamma period. The content of the caveman is an introduction to the history of the canon of the Vinaya (Vinaya). The rest are the same sections as the Jataka (6) on Karma and the Buddha's previous lives contained in the Sub-series and the Avadana sub-sutta. This is an important sutra that connects the Hinayana and the Mahayana. 2000 year old scriptures on display at the British Library Anh 5. “Split” Collection Another very important collection of Buddhist scriptures written on birch bark in Khagosthi script is called the "Split Collection". This is an important collection of Buddhist scriptures related to the early days of Mahayana Buddhism but has not been fully collected as some parts are still in the hands of a few unnamed collectors. According to Harry Falk (7) the only person to write about this collection, this document was found at Peshawar Gandhāra in 2004 but later lost track of its owner apart from the part that belonged to the government. According to Falk, this collection was found in a cave in the Gandhāra region, on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. In 2012 Harry Falk and Seishi Karashima took from this collection, edited and published the original manuscript of the very familiar Mahayana Prajnaparamita Sutra, the "Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra" (8). According to the carbon test, this manuscript was written very early, about 75 AD, and would thus be the oldest prajna scriptures we can see. Its content is similar to the Chinese translation of the Lokaksema (9) translated circa 180. Comparing this bark sutra with the familiar traditional Sanskrit text found in the Tripitaka, we can see that the traditional sutta is only a translation of this sutta because it is evident that there are many words and expressions in the traditional text that are not found in the Gandhāra language. And this bark manuscript is a transcript from an even earlier text, Mined Kharosthi Collections . At this point we also need to recall the famous Kharosthi collections of texts in the past but dating back to the six collections we introduced above. The first is the collection of Prajna-Suttas discovered in Gilgit, Gandhāra (Gilgit Buddhist Manuscripts) edited by Raghu Vira and Lokesh Chandra published in 1959-1974 (10), introduced by Edward Conze in "The Gilgit" Manuscript of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā” (series Orientale Roma XXVI, Ismeo Rome 1960) (11) and I have repeated in my studies of Nagarjuna. The second is the manuscript of the Dhammapada (Dhammapada) of the common language Gandhāra (GandhārPr Prākrit) also written in Kharosthi script. This text of the Dhammapada is so important and subject to a rather long fate that it should also be briefed here. First of all, a part of "Gandhārī Dharmapada" was found by the French traveler Dutreuit de Rhins in 1892. Around this same time the Russian consul also acquired several other pieces. After many separate studies, it was not until the 1960s that John Borough, professor of Sanskrit at University College London, synthesized both texts and published them under the name The Gandhārī Dharmapada, also published by Oxford University in 1962. Value of Buddhist scriptures in Gandhara After twenty years of operation, Professor Richard Salomon has successfully run the organization "Early Buddhist Texts and Texts Research Project" (EBMP). As a researcher, Richard Salomon and colleagues have published important classics on the subject from the EBMP. As a good administrator, Salomon has successfully run a center of international stature, both in terms of close connections between researchers around the world and good relations with donors. and program funding. Most importantly, he also has a vision of the future, so as not to forget the task of training successors for a very unique but very limited academic discipline, the study of ancient Buddhist texts. in Kharosthi script. In twenty years, Salomon has also trained two classes of doctoral and post-doctoral students to prepare for that future (12). In 1999 Salomon published the first book, giving an overview of the purpose and program of work called "Ancient Buddhist Scrolls from Gandhāra: The British Library Kharoṣṭhī Fragments". Twenty years later (2018) Salomon introduced the second volume, reporting the achievements after twenty years of hard work "The Buddhist Literature of Ancient Gandhāra: An Introduction with Selected Translations". The book was warmly welcomed by the majority of readers and researchers and praised the good results of the EBMP program. However, there are still critics. Not personal critiques or questionable content of published works. But this may also be the criticism of those who are too well-intentioned to demand EBMP to do more and more deeply. Criticism of those who admire but still criticize because they do not see the importance of many difficult problems of the researchers involved. Here we can rephrase the question and seek to answer it in a more positive way. I need to say right here that the problem is not Salomon's fault or responsibility. He did his duty, as a cook, the dish was done. How to eat it, what seasonings to add or what to eat with it is the user's part of the documents he and his associates have completed. However, I think Salomon and his fellow researchers will not stop working as collectors of antiquities. They know that importance and sooner or later come to the problem of deeper and broader exploitation. First of all, almost all researchers of Mahayana Buddhism claim that there is no documented period of the origin of the Mahayana sutras. Until the twentieth century, researchers have seen the connection between Hinayana and Mahayana in some sutras. Thesis of the Venerable Thich Minh Chau in 1962 "Comparison of the Chinese Madhyamaka and the Pali Central Sutras" (The Chinese Madhyana Āgama and the Pāli Majjhima Nikāya: A Comparative Study); then scholar Analayo's study "A Comparative Study of the Majjhima-nikaya" in 2011; both the collection of books of the Abhidharma and the Prajñā (Abhidharma and the Prajñā) books by Dharma Master An Thuan and my thesis on the relationship between the Prajnaparamita Sutra and the Abhidharma. -pāramitā Sūtras (13) is the typical representative for the direction of textual analysis. Today, however, with these Kharosthi manuscripts, we have for the first time concrete documentary evidence to prove that a number of Chinese Buddhist texts were translated directly from the Kharosthi text and not through the text. through the word Sanskrit (Sanskrit). So here the importance of exploiting Kharosthi textual documents will help us to study more deeply the researches of Thich Minh Chau, Analayo and An Thuan in three areas of continuity: (1) Studying the "pre-Sanskrit" Buddhist literature means that in the documents, the first manuscripts of the Buddhist scriptures were written down in writing before even being used to write Sanskrit or Pāli (14); (2) Studying Chinese scriptures translated directly from the Kharosthi script (or through oral language predating the writing period); (3) Studying the development of Mahayana Buddhist scriptures (on specific writing other than reasoning or myth or faith as before). These three research steps I think Salomon and other Buddhist researchers are not without thinking. It should also be noted here that, as introduced, in addition to the British Library Collection, there are many other collections of Gandhāra documents scattered in many major libraries and museums around the world such as the six collections that I have just introduced above (in these collections there are manuscripts even earlier than the British Library Collection, and more related to the Mahayana scriptures). Therefore, today's international scholars are not limited to the British Library Collection which is being studied by the University of Washington, but also study other collections as can be seen in the two reports "Kharosthi Manuscript Fragments in the Pelliot". Collection, Bibliotheque Nationale de France” (Parts of the Kharosthi text contained in the Pelliot Collection at the National Library of France) by Salomon published in Bulletin d' Études Indiennes 16, 1998 and Mark Allon and Salomon's "Fragments of a Gandhāri Version of the Mahaparinirvana Sutra in the Schøyen Collection" (Parts of the Gandhāra Sutta in the Schøyen Collection) by Mark Allon and Salomon are included in volume 1 of the anthology. Buddhist Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection, Oslo Hemles Publishing. So even though I haven't read the contents, I have read the titles of GBT's forthcoming books such as Mahāyāna Sūtras in Gāndhārī in the Schøyen Collection: The Bodhisattvapiṭaka- and Sarvapuṇyasamuccaya-sūtras (Gandhāra Mahayana Sutras in the Schøyen Collection); The Gāndhārī Bahubuddha-sūtra: The Library of Congress Scroll finds that they are perhaps following the three-step research path I have outlined above. 8 sets of Buddhist scriptures often recited and the basic meaning of each set (*) Please repeat the Sanskrit Buddhist scriptures and the Pāli Buddhist scriptures that appeared only after the time when the Māgadh Buddhist scriptures were written in Kharosthi script, typically during the time of King Ashoka (king 268-232 BC), people did not write Buddhist scriptures in writing. The writing on the Dharma Pillars of King Asoka has two important points: First, the Kharosthi or Brahmi script on the Dharma Pillar is used to write the Māgadh ngôn language, not the Sanskrit language. Second, the Dharma Pillars, even though they use a Buddhist noun or two (such as "upasaka" or "upāsaka") and mention the Buddha's name, "Shakyamuni" but never mention the Buddhist teachings or the Buddha's name. referring to Buddhist scriptures. From the Guishuang dynasty (50-300), people often used writing to write Sanskrit Buddhist scriptures. So Professor Solomon, In short, to suggest that Salomon or his associates did not pay attention to the importance of the Kharosthi manuscripts is premature criticism of those who wish to know more about the origin of the Buddhist scriptures. Mahayana that I have presented in the book "Buddhist Sutras: Origin and Development".END=NAM MO SHAKYAMUNI BUDDHA.( 3 TIMES ).GOLDEN AMITABHA MONASTERY=VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST NUN=THICH CHAN TANH.AUSTRALIA,SYDNEY.16/5/2021.