Khyentse Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded by the revered Bhutanese lama, filmmaker, and author Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, has shared in a statement that it will continue its support for the Gandhari Manuscript Project, which is focused on conserving, photographing, studying, and publishing the Gandhari manuscript collection held at the Islamabad Museum in Pakistan.
In 2023, Khyentse Foundation announced that a major collection of 2,000-year-old Buddhist manuscripts in the Gandhari language and Kharoshthi script had been donated to the Islamabad Museum.* The estimated 50–60 birch-bark scrolls and scroll fragments of Buddhist texts represent the largest collection of Gandhari birch scrolls known to date, believed to date from the first century BCE to the second century CE.*
“Khyentse Foundation’s new funding for the [Gandhari Manuscript Project’s] work on the manuscripts makes a major contribution to the funding required for the next five-year phase of the project,” the foundation’s remarked in its statement. “It will enable the [Gandhari Manuscript Project] to complete the conservation of the manuscripts and to publish a significant number of the texts they preserve.”
Khyentse Foundation was founded by Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche in 2001 with the aim of promoting the Buddha’s teaching and supporting all traditions of Buddhist study and practice. The foundation’s activities include major text preservation and translation projects, support for monastic colleges in Asia, a worldwide scholarship and awards program, development of Buddhist studies at major universities, training and development for Buddhist teachers, and developing new modes of Dharma-inspired education for children.
“The conservation, imaging, study, and publication of these valuable manuscripts are being undertaken by members of the Gandhari Manuscript Project under an agreement between the Department of Archaeology and Museums, Pakistan, and the University of Sydney, Australia.” explained associate professor of South Asian Buddhist studies at the University of Sydney, Mark Allon. “The [Gandhari Manuscript Project] was able to embark on the first phase of the project in December 2023 with further funding from KF and additional funding from other Buddhist foundations, leading universities and institutes in the US and Canada, and Buddhist communities in Taiwan. . . .
“With two-thirds of the scrolls conserved, [Gandhari Manuscript Project] members have now begun the second phase of the project. This entails the scholarly publication of the manuscripts and making them available to wider interested audiences, especially in digital form and particularly to communities in Pakistan, for whom these manuscripts represent an important part of their cultural heritage. A further valuable component of this project is its goal of training Pakistani conservators in manuscript conservation and Pakistani students in the languages required to read, study, and publish these manuscripts—skills that Pakistan currently lacks.” (Khyentse Foundation)
Prof. Allon said the completion of the conservation laboratory meant that conservators were able to undertake conservation of the fragile birch-bark manuscripts. He highlighted the successful conservation of 28 of 38 unconserved scrolls, and the reconserving in glass of manuscripts previously conserved in plastic. Prof. Allon emphasized that unrolling and reading manuscripts—for the first time in almost 200-years—was highly skilled work, with some taking as long as a week to process.
“The texts these newly conserved manuscripts contain—treasures that have remained hidden for two millennia—represent a great diversity of text types,” Porf. Allon observed. “One scroll conserved this July turned out to contain a Gandhari version of the canonical text known in Pali as the Itivuttaka (“Thus It Was Said”) and in Chinese as the Benshijing 本事經 (Taishō 765). It consists of short discourses of the Buddha in which he articulates a topic first in prose, then in verse. For example, in one discourse the Buddha states that there are three individuals who come into the world for the benefit of humans and gods: a Buddha, a Buddha’s disciple who is an arhat, and a Buddha’s disciple who is still in training, all three of whom teach the dharma for the good of the many.
“Another text describing the death of the Buddha in verse appears to lack a parallel and is most likely a local Gandharan composition. Yet another is a verse text that discusses the causes of happiness and suffering.” (Khyentse Foundation)
Khyentse Foundation’s achievements over the last two decades include: more than 15 million pages of Buddhist texts preserved and made available online; education provided for the children of more than 1,000 families; support for Buddhist studies at more than 35 major universities through endowed chairs and professorships, graduate support, and the establishment of Buddhist studies centers; more than US$1 million in sponsorship for Buddhist teacher-training granted; sacred Buddhist texts translated into more than 15 languages, thanks to the efforts of 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, the Kumarajiva Project, and the Khyentse Vision Project; over US$1.8 million in funding granted to uphold Buddhism in its mother countries, including grassroots partnerships to revitalize interest in Buddhism in India; more than 2,000 scholarships and awards in recognition of excellence in Buddhist study and practice; support for over 3,000 monks and nuns to maintain the tradition of Buddhist scholarship in a monastic setting; and more than 120 open-access Ashoka and Trisong grants distributed to support Dharma and well-being programs.
* Khyentse Foundation Supports Donation of Ancient Gandhari Buddhist Manuscripts to Pakistan (BDG)
See more
Khyentse Foundation
2,000–year–old Gandhari Buddhist Manuscripts Find Permanent Home in Pakistan (Khyentse Foundation)
Gandhari Manuscript Project (University of Sydney)
Related news reports from BDG
Sara McClintock and John Dunne Win Khyentse Foundation’s 2025 Award for Outstanding Translation
Buddhist Studies: Khyentse Foundation Recognizes Louise Roche for Outstanding PhD Dissertation
Khyentse Foundation Honors Chagdud Khadro with 2024 Khyentse Fellowship
Khyentse Foundation Announces Appointment of Dr. Jörg Heimbel as Professor of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
