When Buddhism Turned to Writing

Tuesday, March 20th, 5:00-6:30pm: Professor Richard Salomon

Dr. Richard Salomon is Professor of Asian Languages (Sanskrit) and William P. And Ruth Geberding University Professor at the University of Washington. He also directs the University of Washington’s Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project.

According to the historical traditions of the Theravāda (southern) school of Buddhism, it was around the first century BCE, during a time of crisis and famine, that Buddhists first felt the need to supplement their original purely oral mode of textual preservation by recording the “scriptures” in written form. But until recently, no actual manuscripts from this early period had survived, so that the details of the process of shifting from oral to written transmission were completely unknown.

However, the discoveries in recent decades of hundreds of unprecendently early Buddhist manuscripts from the ancient region of Gandhāra (modern northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan), some dating back to the first century BCE, provide specimens of texts from very near the beginning of the written tradition of Buddhism. Examples and illustrations from these Gandhāran manuscripts will show how Buddhist canonical and post-canonical texts were first rendered into written form and how this gradually led to the development of a formal literary tradition.

Event will be held in the library at the Boston University Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies (147 Bay State Road Boston, MA 02215) on Tuesday, March 20th from 5:00-6:30. All interested faculty, graduate and undergraduate students are encouraged to attend.