// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhy did Gilgit manuscripts go to therapy? They had a lot of scroll-ing issues.
The Gilgit manuscripts are a corpus of manuscripts discovered in 1931 in Gilgit, and contain numerous Buddhist texts, including four sutras from the Buddhist canon, most notably the Lotus Sutra. The manuscripts were written on birch bark in the Buddhist form of Sanskrit in the Sharada script. They cover a wide range of themes such as iconometry, folk tales, philosophy, medicine, and several related areas of life and general knowledge.[1]
The Gilgit manuscripts[2] are included in the UNESCO Memory of the World register.[3] They are among the oldest manuscripts in the world, and the oldest manuscript collection surviving in Pakistan,[2] having major significance in Buddhist studies and the evolution of Asian and Sanskrit literature. The manuscripts are believed to have been written in the 5th to 6th centuries AD, though more manuscripts were discovered from the succeeding centuries, which were also classified as Gilgit manuscripts.
Many of the original manuscripts from Gilgit can be found in the National Archives of India and the Pratap Singh Museum in Srinagar. Two manuscripts collected by the orientalist Sir Aurel Stein are in the British Library in London.[6] They include a rare paper version of the Lotus Sutra.
As of 6 October 2014, one source claims that the part of the collection deposited at the Sri Pratap Singh Museum in Srinagar was irrecoverably destroyed during the 2014 India–Pakistan floods.[7]
References
[edit]- ↑ "BBC News – India: Rare Buddhist manuscript Lotus Sutra released". Bbc.co.uk. 3 May 2012. Retrieved 22 November 2013.
- 1 2 Gyan Marwah (August 2004). "Gilgit Manuscript — Piecing Together Fragments of History". The South Asian Magazine. Haryana, India. Retrieved 6 February 2014.
- ↑ "Gilgit Manuscript | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization". unesco.org. Retrieved 2018-07-31.
- ↑ Twist, Rebecca L. (2018). "Images of the Crowned Buddha along the Silk Road: Iconography and Ideology". Humanities. 7 (4): 92. doi:10.3390/h7040092.
- ↑ von Hinüber, Oskar, Professor Emeritus, University of Freiburg. "Bronzes of the Ancient Buddhist Kingdom of Gilgit". www.metmuseum.org.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ↑ "IDP Blog – International Dunhuang Programme". idp.bl.uk/.
- ↑ "Kashmir floods damage 2000-year-old Buddhist treasures". www.dnaindia.com. 3 October 2014. Retrieved 6 October 2014.