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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Non-Christian sacred works & liturgy > Sacred texts
Three Gandhari Ekottarikagama-Type Sutras continues the Gandharan
Buddhist Texts studies of the first-century A.D. birch bark scrolls
in the British Library's Kharosthi manuscript collection. It
describes the text found on two fragments which constitute the
lower part of a scroll and consists of the remnants of three
sutras. All three sutras are relatively short and have an
association with the number four, which suggests that they are from
a Gandhar- Ekottarikagama, a collection of short discourses grouped
according to numerical principles and one of the major collections
of writings in the Buddhist canon. The first sutra records a
discussion in which a brahman asks the Buddha four questions. The
second su-tra, like the third, depicts the Buddha preaching to
monks. The structure of this sutra is based on the four postures:
walking, standing, sitting, and lying down. The Buddha's discourse
in the third sutra concerns the four efforts (or abandonings). The
book describes the condition of the scroll and its reconstruction;
examines in detail the literary and textual background of the
sutras, comparing them with other extant versions and parallels in
other languages; and presents a transcription of the extant text, a
reconstruction, and an English translation. It includes chapters on
the paleography, orthography, phonology, and morphology of the
text, and offers a detailed analytic commentary. For more
information go to the Early Buddhist Manuscript Project web site at
http://www.ebmp.org/
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