I have been on retreat and missed last week’s classes.
- Are the documents now on a Google drive somewhere?
- Does anyone know whether the class recordings are accessible?
Thanks.
I am interested in early Buddhist texts, particularly SA/SN sutras, in Gandhari collections.
Hi Gillian, hope you had wonderful retreat.
sorry but answer to both of your questions would be no. They did share few documents through email in the beginning, with those who registered for the course or I guess those who attended the very first class. It seems still there are some more. In the last class this issue was raised to which they said they will share the new link for the complete material, which is still awaited. And the location of recordings is also yet to be received.
Just to give you a brief update on the last class, so, Prof. Allon started with first manuscript as he had told us in the beginning, that is manuscript having a Anattalakkhana like Sutta which is named as *Aṇatvalakṣaṇa Sutra in gandhāri. For this particular Sutta, he has suggested us to go through his article in the Research on the Saṃyukta-āgama - edited by Dhammadinnā (2020), A Gāndhāri Saṃyukta-āgama Version of the ‘Discourse on Not-self’ (Pali Anattalakkhaṇa-sutta, Sanskrit *Anātmalakṣaṇa-sūtra). Through this manuscript, we began to get familiarise with gāndhāri alphabets using the tool ( which can be found here Aṇatvalakṣaṇa Sutra – Gandhāran Buddhist Texts). Next, the text was decoded, analysed for closely associated / inferred words (like Bhayava is the word Bhagavā in Pali). The gāndhāri Sutta was then compared with other counterparts Suttas in Pali and Sanskrit, and a lot more was discussed! hoping we have recordings soon… 
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Thank you @Sharada for the synopsis.
I didn’t make a lot of notes, but what I got out of the lectures were not so much the readings, which is basically Mark walking through his article and explaining the process of deciphering, reconstructing and translation.
I actually got more insights from Mark’s asides and the question and answer sessions. For example, at one point Mark casually mentioned “kho” is often treated as a “start of idea marker”, indicating a new topic or idea is about to be introduced. I’ve not seen this mentioned in any Pali textbook, and it is a revelation! I now find I understand the placement of “kho” and it’s meaning far better when I read Pali text.
There was also discussion on Western vs Eastern dialects of Prakrit, and how these relate to Gandhāri, and I found this useful too, and gave me some insights in the style of the Tipiṭaka, which as we know is mostly written in a Western dialect but occasionally contain Eastern dialect forms.
Mark also answered my question about the ambiguity of word endings and the collapse of case forms which also gave me some insight into Pali case endings, which of course have also undergone partial collapse from Sanskrit. The insight I received here is that sometimes the choice of a word ending could be due to a speaker’s style, or the scribe’s preferred way of annotation.
Mahesh Deokar has an interesting theory that the variance in spelling in the manuscripts (which we occasionally find in the Tipiṭaka as well, requiring somewhat convoluted rules in Kaccāyana to “explain”) may be due to scribes hearing the oral reading inaccurately, and mispelling when they are writing it down. Apparently this is common even in India today, with Mahesh observing you often see in signage of roadside stalls and shops words which are evidently mispelled. I can definitely attest travelling through Asia I often see mispellings of English words and sometimes even native languages - I am assuming the store owners and perhaps even the sign painter are poor in literacy.
Another interesting discussion was that the “standard” formulae (or pericopes) can be different across DN, MN, SN and AN. Mark theorises these differences arose because different monks were assigned to the different Nikāyas, and hence over time these pericopes evolved distinctly.
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From Mark:
Dear students of my Gandhari manuscript reading workshop,
Here is the link to the OneDrive folder containing all the material we are using: Gandhari & Kharosthi - student resources. Hopefully, you will be able to access the full contents this time.
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