Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project

FAIN: RZ-50898-08

University of Washington (Seattle, WA 98195-1016)
Richard G. Salomon (Project Director: November 2007 to June 2012)

Preparation for publication of scholarly editions--including translations and extensive annotations--of Gandhari texts documenting the early history of Buddhism. (36 months)

The University of Washington Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project was constituted in 1996 to publish a collection of Buddhist manuscripts on birch-bark scrolls, dating from the first century A.D. They are the oldest extant Buddhist texts, and are having a profound effect on the study of Buddhism in its Indian homeland and other parts of Asia. Many other manuscripts of similar type have since been discovered and are being published in the project's Gandharan Buddhist Texts series. Five volumes have been published, with a sixth now in the press and several more in progress.