Manuscript collections
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Manuscript collections. Over the last century, a number of manuscript collections from earlier periods of Buddhism have been re-discovered by modern scholars. These collections contain a variety of texts, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist. Collectively, they include manuscripts written in a variety of languages, such as Sanskrit, Gandhari, Chinese, etc.
Notable manuscript collections include:
- Dunhuang manuscripts
- Gandharan manuscripts
- Gilgit manuscripts
- Turfan manuscripts
- Bamiyan manuscripts
- Sanskrit manuscripts from various Tibetan monasteries (see below).
The Schøyen Collection also includes many Buddhist and Hindu manuscripts.
Within Tibetan monasteries
Many Sanskrit manuscripts have been preserved within monasteries in Tibet.
- Thousands of Indian texts from a similar period fell to ruin, both on account of the failure to systematically preserve them and because of the tropical climate. In the high altitude of Tibet, many manuscripts have remained untouched over hundreds of years, even as they lay forgotten in the storerooms of monasteries, and scholars say, they could survive another millennium... So far, more than 500 bundles of palm leaves have been discovered-each containing thousands of lines of text-and Tibet's monasteries could very well hold many more. Most of this text was hundreds of years ago copied in India and Nepal, and brought to Tibet.[1]
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