A new fundamental study of a Gāndhārī Abhidharma text

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Hi Everyone,

Collett Cox has just announced the publication of her (long-awaited) A Gāndhārī Abhidharma Text. British Library Kharoṣṭhī Fragment 28

Collett Cox with Andrew Glass. 2025. A Gāndhārī Abhidharma Text: British Library Kharoṣṭhī Fragment 28. Gandharan Buddhist Texts, Volume 8. Seattle: University of Washington Press. 594 pages, 8.5 × 11 in, 13 black-and-white illustrations, 10 color plates. ISBN: 9780295753843.

It is freely available here:

Here is her comment on the Indology List:

This eighth volume in the Gandharan Buddhist Texts (GBT) series presents an early Indian Buddhist manuscript in the Gāndhārī language and Kharoṣṭhī script, which records the surviving portion of a polemical scholastic text criticizing the views of several opponents who maintain the existence of past and future factors. The text first examines the position of one or more unnamed opponents who defend the existence of past and future factors in relation to the causal dynamics of action. Next, it offers a detailed presentation of the proposition “everything exists” attributed to a Sarvāstivādin opponent, followed by a point-by-point criticism. Since no textual parallels have been identified in other known Buddhist texts, this Gāndhārī text preserves important evidence for the development of early Indian Buddhist doctrine and scholastic practice.

Given the terse nature of scholastic texts, this volume includes chapters that introduce the text and its arguments for those interested primarily in its contents. These chapters examine the possible context, genre, and historical background of the text in relation to other early Buddhist scholastic texts. They also present a summary of its contents through a topical outline and a more general commentary containing references to analogous discussions in other Buddhist texts.

As in the case of other volumes in the GBT series, this volume also discusses the manuscript’s physical layout as well as the paleography, orthography, phonology, morphology, and syntax of the recorded text. A transcription, edition, and translation of the text are accompanied by detailed notes on problematic terminology and alternative interpretations, images of both the conserved and the reconstructed scrolls, and an index of Gāndhārī words with Sanskrit and Pali equivalents.

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Wow. This looks to be a major new work and even from the description above it immediately brought to mind chapters in the Kathāvatthu. Opening up the document I immediately see:

Section three begins with the fundamental proposition “everything exists” (sarvam asti), which is expanded through a series of seven formulaic declarations (ll. 67–68): “Everything exists at all times. Everything exists everywhere. Everything exists with every aspect. (*Everything exists) through every reason. Everything exists through all modes. Everything exists through all causes. Everything exists though all conditions.” Both the fundamental proposition and the formulaic declarations are explicitly marked as the view of an opponent who is identified only later in the text as a Mahāsarvāstivādin. This passage in our text is extremely close in both content and structure to the chapter “Everything Exists” in the Kathāvatthu, which the commentary claims represents the views of the Sabbatthivādins. In our text, this initial statement of the fundamental proposition and its attendant declarations serves initially as the basis for further elaboration by the opponent, and then for a point-by-point criticism by the proponent.

Striking. Thank you for bringing this to our attention!

:pray:

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