Writings: BuddhismThe British Library Gandharan scrolls2 of 10

Writings: Buddhism

The British Library Gandharan scrolls

The British Library Gandharan scrolls are twenty-nine fragments of birch-bark scrolls with Buddhist texts in the Gandhari language. The library acquired them in 1994, and no find record is known. Richard Salomon provisionally dates them to about the first half of the first century CE, within a wider range set by handwriting and language.

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Three dates, kept apart

  1. The text's date: the tradition's view

    No statement consulted, from any branch, gives a date for these texts, which are about twenty-six separate works.

  2. The text's date: critical scholars' view

    The sources used give no composition date for most of the texts, and a ruler's name in one text shows only that the text was composed during or after his reign, not when this copy was made.

  3. This copy made

    provisionally the first half of the first century CE (Richard Salomon), within a range from the beginning of the first century to the first half of the second century CE that handwriting and language allow, and the bar shows that range; a ruler's name in one text and names on a clay jar point to the earlier part, though Salomon notes that the ruler's name shows only that the text was composed during or after his reign, not when this copy was made, and that the jar's link to the scrolls is not established; a 2008 conservation paper by Holly Krueger remarks that carbon-14 results place most of the related material in the first century BCE, with no figures

  4. This copy found

    No find record is known. The scrolls were reportedly found in a clay jar at an unknown place (Afghanistan is possible), and the British Library acquired them in 1994, with help from an anonymous benefactor.

All four rows share one timeline. A row with no marker says why in words. How ancient texts are dated.

What it is

These are twenty-nine fragments of Buddhist scrolls, by Salomon's 2003 count. A scroll is a long strip made to be rolled up, and these are of birch bark, written in black ink in the Gandhari language and the Kharosthi script.12 Gandhari is an Indian language related to Sanskrit and to Pali, the language of the Theravada scriptures, and Kharosthi is a script adapted from Aramaic.3 The fragments come from at least twenty scrolls and hold about twenty-six texts, by Salomon's 1997 count, among them verses, discourses, commentaries, and edifying stories.42

One of the texts is a Gandhari version of the Rhinoceros Sutra, a poem that the Pali canon keeps in the Sutta-nipata.2 Counts differ: Salomon's 1997 survey counted 32 fragments, his 2003 article counts 29, and Stefan Baums counted 28 scrolls by 21 scribes in 2014.213

How the copy was dated

Richard Salomon, who studied the collection, calls his dating provisional.1 One fragmentary text names a satrap (a regional governor) called Jihonika, likely to have ruled around the 30s CE. Salomon notes that this shows only that the text was composed during or after Jihonika's reign, not when this copy was written. A clay jar that came with the scrolls, though apparently not the one that held them, names Vasavadatta and Suhasoma. The same names appear in other inscriptions from the early first century CE, and Salomon adds that no reliable evidence links the two jars.2

Handwriting and language put the scrolls between the beginning of the first century and the first half of the second century CE. Salomon sees reason to favor the earlier part but holds that this cannot be proven. A laboratory test of the clay pots (thermoluminescence) gave a range from the first to the eighth century CE. Salomon writes that it did not rule out the early date but favored no period within the range.2

Baums lists the collection as the first century CE, with a question mark, and Salomon dates the Gandhari manuscripts as a group from about the first to third centuries CE.35 Holly Krueger, a Library of Congress paper conservator, remarked in 2008, in a paper on conserving the Library's own scroll, that carbon-14 results place most of the related material in the first century BCE. She gives no figures, her paper is not a dating report, and the sources used here include no radiocarbon report for these scrolls.6 See how ancient texts are dated.

The text: its date and authorship

The Theravada tradition's account

The Theravada tradition, the branch of Buddhism followed in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, teaches that five hundred monks recited the Buddha's discourses soon after his death. It holds that they were kept by memory until they were written down in Sri Lanka in the first century BCE.789 It attributes the discourses of its Pali canon to the Buddha and a few of his closest disciples. It places the Sutta-nipata, the collection that holds the Rhinoceros Sutra, in the Khuddaka Nikaya, the collection of little texts.10 The sources used here for the Theravada account do not discuss these scrolls, and no statement about them from a Dharmaguptaka, Mahayana, or Vajrayana source was found.

The historians' view

Salomon holds that the scrolls' many Sutta-nipata parallels are likely to confirm the long-held scholarly view that the Sutta-nipata holds one of the earliest layers of the Pali canon. He links the scrolls to the Dharmaguptaka school, an early school that was not Mahayana, on the strength of a dedication on the jar in which they were reportedly found. In his preliminary survey, he holds, the scrolls appear to show early northern Indian teaching, with nothing suggesting Mahayana developments.2 Baums lists their container as a clay pot donated to a Dharmaguptaka monastery.3 The sources used name no author for any text.

How it was found

No find record is known. Salomon wrote in 1997 that the scrolls' place of origin is not known but may be Afghanistan. By verbal report, they lay inside one of five large clay pots, each with a Kharosthi dedication, which the library also acquired.2

Baums writes that most Gandharan scrolls were not found in excavations but reached scholars after being traded on the art market.3 The British Library acquired these in 1994, with the help of an anonymous benefactor.12 Salomon reads them as worn-out copies, buried with ritual care once newer copies replaced them. He writes that the relics of monks and Buddhist texts appear to have been treated alike, as sacred objects, and likens this to the genizah of Jewish tradition, a collection of discarded documents for which religious law or custom required ritual burial.2 A British Library image of part 31 (Or. 14915) is online.11

What it shows, and what it does not

They show that Buddhists in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, in the early centuries of the common era, kept a substantial body of written scriptures in Gandhari. The writings range from poems to scholastic works.2 Some texts have parallels in Pali or Chinese, and many do not.5 The project that studies them says that, on a first-century date, they would be the oldest surviving substantial collection of Buddhist manuscripts.4

They do not show what the Pali canon said at that time. The scrolls are in another language, and at least some probably belong to the Dharmaguptaka school.5 They do not show where they were found or what else lay with them. Salomon calls the collection presumably a small fraction of one monastery's library, so a complete picture of that library is not available. No monastic-code texts appear among them.12

Sources

  1. Richard Salomon. The Senior Manuscripts: Another Collection of Gandharan Buddhist Scrolls. Journal of the American Oriental Society 123, no. 1 (copy saved from the Internet Archive), 2003, pp. 73 to 92 (section 1, introduction). Accessed 2026-11-05.
  2. Richard Salomon. A preliminary survey of some early Buddhist manuscripts recently acquired by the British Library. Journal of the American Oriental Society 117, no. 2 (full text on the Digital Library and Museum of Buddhist Studies, National Taiwan University), 1997, pp. 353 to 358 (sections 1 to 6). Accessed 2026-11-05.
  3. Stefan Baums. Gandharan Scrolls: Rediscovering an Ancient Manuscript Type. In Manuscript Cultures: Mapping the Field, edited by Jorg B. Quenzer, Dmitry Bondarev, and Jan-Ulrich Sobisch (De Gruyter), 2014, pp. 183 to 225 (section 1, section 2, Table 1, Table 2). Accessed 2026-11-05.
  4. The British Library Kharosthi Fragments. University of Washington, Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project (Department of Asian Languages and Literature), project page. Accessed 2026-11-05.
  5. Richard Salomon. Gandhari, Buddhist Literature in. Encyclopedia of Buddhism (Macmillan Reference USA), via Encyclopedia.com, 2004. Accessed 2026-11-05.
  6. Holly H. Krueger. Conservation of the Library of Congress' Gandhara Scroll: A Collaborative Process. The Book and Paper Group Annual 27 (American Institute for Conservation), 2008, pp. 29 and 30 (background). Accessed 2026-11-05.
  7. Paul Harrison. Canon. Encyclopedia of Buddhism (Macmillan Reference USA), via Encyclopedia.com, 2004. Accessed 2026-10-28.
  8. John T. Bullitt. Theravada Buddhism: A Chronology. Access to Insight, 2005. Accessed 2026-10-28.
  9. Lewis R. Lancaster. Buddhist Books and Texts: Canon and Canonization. Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed. (Macmillan Reference USA), via Encyclopedia.com, 2005. Accessed 2026-10-28.
  10. Access to Insight. Tipitaka: The Pali Canon. Access to Insight. Accessed 2026-10-28.
  11. British Library (uploaded to Wikimedia Commons). File: Fragmentary Buddhist text, Gandhara birchbark scrolls (1st C), part 31, BL Or. 14915. Wikimedia Commons, file description. Accessed 2026-11-05.