A Dictionary of the Gandhari Language

FAIN: PM-50042-07

University of Washington (Seattle, WA 98195-1016)
Richard G. Salomon (Project Director: July 2006 to August 2013)

Preparation of the first dictionary of Gandhari, one of the major languages of early Buddhism spoken in the region of Gandhara (modern northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan) between the 300 B.C. and A.D. 300.

The proposal is for the first dictionary of Gandhari, a language of the Middle Indo-Aryan family used in the first few centuries AD in Gandhara (modern northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan). Gandhari was until very recently sparsely documented and studied, but with the discovery in the last decade of large numbers of manuscript texts dating from the first and second centuries AD, it has now been revealed to be one of the major languages of early Buddhism. The dictionary project with be working in close cooperation with the Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project (EBMP), which is charged with publishing the new manuscripts. The primary goal of the project will be to create an online dictionary, as an expansion and refinement of the current working version which has already been prepared by EBMP researchers, but a long-term goal will be to also publish a traditional print dictionary.