Writings: BuddhismThe Gilgit manuscripts5 of 10

Writings: Buddhism

The Gilgit manuscripts

The Gilgit manuscripts are an estimated 50 or so Buddhist books in Sanskrit, mostly on birch bark, found by chance near Gilgit, in northern Pakistan, in 1931. Handwriting dates them from about the 6th to the 8th or 9th century CE. Most are now held by the National Archives of India in New Delhi.

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Three dates, kept apart

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

    The Tibetan accounts of the code used here (84000's Vinaya overview, which says the Buddha introduced each rule) give no date for the code as a whole. The 84000 glossary gives circa the 2nd through the 6th century CE, which the scholars' row shows.

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

    about the 2nd through the 6th century CE for the monastic code of the Mulasarvastivada school (the 84000 glossary, which names no author for the date)

  3. This copy made

    about the 6th to the 8th or 9th century CE by handwriting (Paul Harrison and Jens-Uwe Hartmann); the 6th and 7th century for the round script and the 7th century on for the later one (Noriyuki Kudo)

  4. This copy found

    found by chance in 1931 near Gilgit, with no record of the first digging; a one-week excavation followed in 1938

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

What it is

The Gilgit manuscripts are Buddhist books in Sanskrit, the classical language of ancient India. They were found in 1931 at Naupur, near Gilgit in northern Pakistan.12 Most are written on birch bark. Noriyuki Kudo counts some manuscripts on paper and one on palm leaf, while Harrison and Hartmann name only the palm-leaf one as an exception.134 Oskar von Hinuber estimates about 50 manuscripts holding 57 titles, plus 17 avadana tales (Buddhist stories of past deeds) that may or may not have been separate texts. The leaves were scattered, so an exact count is not possible at present.31

The texts include the monastic code of the Mulasarvastivada school, an early branch of Indian Buddhism. They also include the Lotus Sutra, Perfection of Wisdom sutras, and two medical texts.143

How the copy was dated

The dating rests on paleography, the comparison of letter shapes with writing that can be dated elsewhere. The sources used here report no radiocarbon date for the find. Aurel Stein, who reported the find in 1931, wrote that the handwriting of some leaves suggested they may date back to the sixth century CE.5 The manuscripts use one script, called Gilgit/Bamiyan script, in two forms. Noriyuki Kudo dates the round form, used for Mahayana works, to the 6th and 7th centuries. He dates the later form, used for the monastic code and other non-Mahayana works, from the 7th century on.1

Paul Harrison and Jens-Uwe Hartmann hold that, on handwriting, the manuscripts may be dated from the sixth to the eighth or even the ninth century.4 Oskar von Hinuber holds that the Lotus Sutra copies show the text was firmly part of Buddhist life in Gilgit under the Palola Sahi kings. They ruled from the late 6th to the early 8th century.3 The ranges overlap, and none of the sources reports a dispute.

For comparison, Seishi Karashima reported in 2017 a radiocarbon date of 679 to 770 CE, at 95.4 percent probability, for a different stack of birch-bark manuscripts in the round script, said to come from Greater Gandhara.6 It is not a date for the Gilgit find. For the methods, see how ancient texts are dated.

The text: its date and authorship

The date strip marks the monastic code, the Mulasarvastivada Vinaya. The collection's other texts have their own dates.

Tibetan and Tiantai accounts

The translation project 84000 holds that the Tibetan canon's monastic code is the Mulasarvastivada Vinaya, and that its texts record the circumstances in which the Buddha introduced each rule.7 The only account of the code's origin in this box is Tibetan, and it gives no date. The 84000 glossary's date is in the other box.

For the Perfection of Wisdom sutras in the collection, 84000 holds that Mahayana tradition counts them as teachings from the Buddha's second turning of the wheel of Dharma.8 The Dalai Lama, in a 2014 talk on Tibetan Buddhism, holds that the Buddha gave them before select gatherings.9 The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions describes a Tiantai classification that places them in the fourth of five periods of the Buddha's life.10 None of these three statements gives a date.

Scholars and the 84000 glossary

The 84000 glossary dates the monastic code's compiling and writing down to about the 2nd through the 6th century CE and names no author for the date. Its Vinaya overview adds that scholars disagree about whether a Mulasarvastivada school existed as such.117

Luis Gomez, a scholar of Buddhism, argues that Mahayana sutras began to be composed probably around the beginning of the common era.12 Paul Harrison holds that Buddhists could accept a teaching as the word of the Buddha if it was meaningful, accorded with the dharma, and led toward liberation, and that this is how some Buddhists came to accept the Mahayana sutras.13 These statements cover the texts, not the Gilgit copies, and none names an author for the sutras.

How it was found

The 1931 find was an accident. According to Kudo, Stein reported that at the end of May 1931 local boys found ancient documents in the hills of Naupur, at a spot taken for a stupa, a Buddhist shrine mound. Stein acquired some leaves from the villagers.1 Kudo writes that there is no accurate record of what was found, how, or what happened to it afterward.1

An official excavation by Madhusudan Kaul Shastri ran for a week in August 1938. It found torn birch-bark leaves and four complete manuscripts, one of them on palm leaf, in the same mound.1 Later, Gerard Fussman argued that the site was a stone building, probably a chapel or lodging for monks, rather than a stupa.1

The leaves found in 1931 came under state control in 1933 and went to Srinagar. A substantial part seems to have gone missing there. In 1948 the rest went to the National Archives of India in New Delhi.1 The leaves from 1938 are in the Sri Pratap Singh Museum in Srinagar. Other pieces are in the Scindia Oriental Museum in Ujjain and the British Library. The Tucci collection was housed at the National Museum of Pakistan in Karachi until 2014, and Kudo writes that no information from the museum has been available since.1

What it shows, and what it does not

Hartmann holds that the Gilgit texts convey a picture of the Buddhism practiced in the area between the 5th and the 7th century. He gives that span for the practice the texts reflect and does not say it dates the copies. Local monks followed the Mulasarvastivada monastic code, and they also kept Mahayana sutras, some used for protection against harm.2 Von Hinuber adds that, on poorly documented evidence, the monks served as religious advisers and healers, and possibly as ritual specialists. He calls the find the only surviving library from ancient India.3

It does not show how the texts read when first composed. Gomez holds that Mahayana sutras began to be composed probably around the beginning of the common era, and the copies are dated to the 6th century CE and later.124 The 84000 glossary puts the monastic code's compiling in the 2nd through the 6th century CE, which reaches the copies' earliest dates.11 These comparisons are made here from the sources' dates. Nor is there an accurate record of the 1931 find, and the leaves were split up afterward, so how they lay when found is poorly documented.1

Sources

  1. Noriyuki Kudo. On and around the Gilgit Manuscripts in the National Archives of India. The Journal of Oriental Studies 29 (Institute of Oriental Philosophy, Tokyo), 2019, pp. 168 to 181. Accessed 2026-11-05.
  2. Jens-Uwe Hartmann. The Schoyen Collection in Context (introduction in Traces of Gandharan Buddhism). Traces of Gandharan Buddhism, An Exhibition of Ancient Buddhist Manuscripts in the Schoyen Collection, by Jens Braarvig and Fredrik Liland (Hermes Publishing, Oslo), 2010, pp. xxvi to xxvii. Accessed 2026-11-05.
  3. Oskar von Hinuber. The Saddharmapundarikasutra at Gilgit, Manuscripts, Worshippers, and Artists. Lotus Sutra Manuscript Series 12 (Institute of Oriental Philosophy, Soka Gakkai, and National Archives of India, 2012); Kudo cites it as The Journal of Oriental Studies 22 (2012), 2012, pp. 1 to 11 of the PDF. Accessed 2026-11-05.
  4. Paul Harrison and Jens-Uwe Hartmann. Introduction (in From Birch Bark to Digital Data). From Birch Bark to Digital Data, Recent Advances in Buddhist Manuscript Research, ed. Harrison and Hartmann (Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, Vienna), 2014, pp. vii to xx; sections 4, 7, 8, and 9. Accessed 2026-11-05.
  5. Nalinaksha Dutt, D. M. Bhattacharya, and Shivnath Sharma. Gilgit Manuscripts, volume 1 (Buddhism in Kashmir), quoting Aurel Stein in The Statesman, July 24, 1931. Research Department, Jammu and Kashmir State, Srinagar, 1939, p. 41. Accessed 2026-11-05.
  6. Seishi Karashima. Some Folios of the Tathagataguna-jnanacintya-visayavatara and Dvadasadandaka-nama-astasata-vimalikarana in the Kurita Collection. International Journal of Buddhist Thought and Culture 27.1 (Seoul), 2017, pp. 11 to 44; abstract only. Accessed 2026-11-05.
  7. John Canti. Discipline: The Vinaya Overview. 84000 Translating the Words of the Buddha. Accessed 2026-11-05.
  8. 84000 Translating the Words of the Buddha. Perfection of Wisdom (Kangyur section overview). 84000, Overview; Themes, Narratives, Style, and Significance; history of the texts. Accessed 2026-10-28.
  9. Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Explaining Tantra in Tibetan Buddhism at Shuchi-in University. dalailama.com, 2014. Accessed 2026-10-28.
  10. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. Five Periods and Eight Schools. Oxford University Press, via Encyclopedia.com, entry. Accessed 2026-11-05.
  11. 84000 Translating the Words of the Buddha. Mulasarvastivada Vinaya (glossary entry). 84000 Translating the Words of the Buddha. Accessed 2026-11-05.
  12. Luis O. Gomez. Buddhism: Buddhism in India. Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd edition (Macmillan Reference USA), via Encyclopedia.com, 2005. Accessed 2026-10-28.
  13. Paul Harrison. Canon. Encyclopedia of Buddhism (Macmillan Reference USA), via Encyclopedia.com, 2004. Accessed 2026-10-28.