And there goes any chance of retrieving any ancient Buddhist texts

it seems, he was worries that continues their ancient buddhists texts destruction effort by the taliban. may be i am wrong

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Well, we already have two full canons (of what seems to be mainly Sthavira material, with the wildcard of the Ekottara thrown in) and some fragmentary stuff here and there. It would be cool to find other stuff, but most likely what will turn up in Central Asia will be more Sthavira stuff.

What would be really interesting would be a Mahasamghika Agama or two. But it seems like the Mahasamghika schools were not into spreading out of India. The farthest they went were the BahuƛrutÄ«ya of Gandhara.

Afghanistan and Pakistan seem to have mainly been the domain of Sthavira schools like Sarvastivada, Dharmaguptaka, Mahasisaka, etc. So I wouldn’t expect to be blown away by the texts in Afghanistan waiting to be discovered. But you never really know about these things.

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In this region, I think the Lokottaravada were the biggest Mahasamghika sect. They were in Bamiyan, Afghanistan. Some of their texts have been recovered, some agama texts, and some Mahayana sutras. Kind of a mix of EBT’s along with the type of Mahayana sutras that became very popular in East Asia. I believe the giant buddha statues at Bamiyan were also associated with the Lokottaravadins.

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I’d imagine that if the texts have survived this long, buried, they’ll last for however long it takes for Afghanistan to become more stable and free.

In the meantime, the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is leading to immense suffering, so perhaps we could bear that in mind.

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I didn’t find any interesting texts from what they found. Only the one where the frog got Enlightenment :joy: I’m more afraid for the old Buddhist sites