Forgotten Buddhist Literatures as Revealed by Manuscript Discoveries in India and Beyond

Abstract In the early phases of the modern study of Buddhism, it was widely assumed that the Buddhist canon preserved in the Pali language by the Theravāda tradition of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia represented the only original record of the “words of the Buddha” ( buddha-vacana ). But the notion of Pali primacy has been steadily eroded by discoveries of vast numbers of early Buddhist manuscripts in the formerly Buddhist regions of northwestern India and adjoining countries and in Central Asia. These discoveries have provided ample evidence of the existence in antiquity of voluminous bodies of Buddhist literature in Sanskrit and Gandhari that are parallel to and as historically valid as the Pali versions. They have shifted the perception of Buddhism away from a linear model and toward a wider understanding of the many Buddhisms that coexisted in antiquity. This article surveys some of the major discoveries of Buddhist manuscripts and summarizes the new perspectives that they have engendered.