Gāndhārī language

:"Alternate meanings: see Gandhari"

Gāndhārī (Devanagari: गंधारी) was a north-western prakrit spoken in Gāndhāra. Like all prakrits, it is thus descended from either Vedic Sanskrit or a closely related prior language. Gāndhārī has been found written in the unicode|Kharoṣṭhī script. Scholars believe that the language featured elements from the languages native to the area (pre-Indo-European population), as well as Dardic and East-Iranian ethnic languages, which are related to the Indo-Aryan family to which all prakrits belong.

Buddhist manuscripts in Gāndhāri

Until the recent discoveries, the only Gāndhāri manuscript available to the scholars was a birch-bark scroll of "Dharmapada" discovered at Kohmāri Mazār near Khotan in Xinjiang, China in 1893 CE. Recently a large number of fragmantary manuscripts of Buddhist texts were discovered eastern Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan. These include [Saloman Richard, "Recent Discoveries of Early Buddhist Manuscripts" in "Between the Empires, Society in India 300 BCE to 400 CE", Oxford University Press, New York, 2006 CE, ISBN 978 0 19 568935 8] ,

*29 fragments of birch-bark scrolls of British Library collection consisting of parts of "Dharmapada", "Anavatapta gāthā", "Khargavişāņa sutra", "Sangiti sutra" and a collection of sutras of "Anguttara",
*129 fragments of palm leaf folios of Schøyen collection, 27 fragments of palm-leaf folios of Hirayama collection and 18 fragments of palm leaf folios of Hayashidera collection consisting of "Mahāparinirvāna sutra" and "Bhadrakalpikā sutra",
*24 birch-bark scrolls of Senior collection consists of mostly different sutras and "Anavatapta gāthā", and,
*8 fragments of a single birch-bark scroll and 2 small fragments of another scroll of University of Washington collection consisting of probably an Abhidharma text or other scholastic commentaries.

Notes

ee also

*Gandhāran Buddhist Texts

References

# [http://asnic.utexas.edu/asnic/subject/peoplesandlanguages.html Rahman, Dr. Tariq, "Peoples and Languages in Pre-Islamic Indus Valley",University of Texas at Austin.]

Further reading

Yu. V. Gankovsky, "The Peoples of Pakistan: An Ethnic History". Translated from the Russian by Igor Gavrilov (Lahore: Peoples' Publishing House, 1964)