2014

→ Question: “Two questions, first of all: You know, this place in Bamiyan, was this an archive accessible to the only inner circle, or masses could get access to these, you know, documents? …”
RS: “Well, you know, unfortunately, we can only guess, because these things were not discovered in situ, they were … not found in the course of archaeological discovery. They are found by people unknown and passed around. So, we can only guess and extrapolate from what we do know. I think it is pretty safe to guess that these were the contents of some sort of monastic library. …
So, but I think exactly where these things were and why they were there, we just can’t know that. But I think these were either parts of a monastic library, or in some cases they might have been, as I said, ritually buried old manuscripts.”
Q: “Is there textual evidence for a monastic library?”
RS: “No. No, I just made it up [laughter]. Um, not that I’m aware of. Not explicit references” [0:52:08 to 54:42; emphasis ours].
→ “I’ve never heard of the Taliban … targeted manuscripts particularly” [1:11:42–50].

2017

→ “These manuscripts [MS 2382/270] … are … from Bamiyan. Everybody knows Bamiyan nowadays because of the famous giant Buddhas and the notorious destruction of them by the Taliban. But what is not generally known, at least not in the public view, is that Bamiyan is also the source of a huge cache of manuscripts dating back, in some cases, to the third or possibly second century AD. Many thousands of manuscripts and fragments which are still being published …” [11:29–12:04].
→ “Incidentally, just two weeks ago I received photographs of a new set of eleven very interesting and important scrolls of this type. So they’re still turning up in various places” [24:22–24:37].

→ “Many manuscripts also turned up in Bamiyan. … we know the buddhas were blown up and … refugees were sheltering in these caves. Supposedly, the story goes that a wall fell down … and a big cache of manuscripts appeared in Gandhari Sanskrit” [25:50–26:06].

2018

→ Question from the audience: “Could you just say something about how the manuscripts, I mean how we get manuscripts, how do you have these [inaudible] manuscripts?” [57:57–58:05]
→ Salomon: “Yes, that’s a little bit complicated. The problem is that in nearly all cases we don’t really know where these manuscripts come from and that’s why I didn’t talk about that. Almost all of the manuscripts of this type have come up through private collections or antiquities market and that is frankly a murky place. The people who have possession of them may or may not know where they actually came from and they may or may not tell you or may or may not tell you the truth” [58:07–47].
→ “They all come, they probably, all or most of them come from eastern Afghanistan, some maybe from northwestern Pakistan. And so that’s unfortunately, … all we really know. There are no cases where we have any of these manuscripts and know specifically, definitely, exactly where they came from, but we have some general knowledge about the provenance. It’s a problem” [59:39–1:00:13].
→ “It’s hard to give exact numbers. Let me explain the problem. There are groups of manuscripts. There are six or seven major groups. And typically, one of these groups will typically have, take two or three dozen manuscripts. But there’s one group which comes from a place called Bamiyan, which people have heard of cause they were, everybody knows, they were the giant buddhas and the Taliban blew them up in 1999 or whenever it was. What the public general doesn’t know is that there were also thousands and thousands of manuscripts found there. And most of those manuscripts were later manuscripts in Sanskrit, but there’s an early phase of Gandhari manuscripts similar to what I’ve been talking about. Now, that contains, that consists of 300 or so fragments and most of them are—when I say fragments, I mean like this. So, it’s very hard to say, okay, what is that? Is that 300 manuscripts or are they part and how many manuscripts were they actually parts of? And in most cases they’re so small that it’s hard to be sure. So there might be 300 fragments but there might have been 50 or 60 manuscripts at a little more than a guess. … I would say we have—well, I said 200—we have partial remnants of at least 200 manuscripts and possible more than that” [1:09:29–1:11:26].

2019

→ “Now we’re looking at hundreds of manuscripts. I’ve just been in Pakistan trying to secure a home for a new collection that’s turned up. … there’s some 60 old manuscripts in this. I don’t know how many texts. … really many, great diversity of genres, … canonical, what would correspond to pali canonical texts, commentaries, abhidharma texts, mahayana texts as well later, the whole gamut…. We then have manuscripts that turned up in Bamiyan when caves were destroyed there” [12:47–13:21; emphasis ours].

2022

→ “The first collection – you know in the last 30 years several major collections have appeared mostly outside of Pakistan – the British Library Gandari collections, the first to appear, these manuscripts here birchbark, were found in this pot and they were donated to the British Library” [28:12–28:31].
→ “Another major collection was found in Bamiyan. These were said to have been found in these caves when … people sheltering either broke down a wall or a wall fell down. This interesting collection spans some 800 years beginning with the very earliest where we have manuscripts in Gāndhārī language and Kharosthi scripts … and then the later manuscripts are actually in … Sanskrit language and in the Brahmi script. So these witness the shift among Buddhist communities in this region from the use of the Gāndhārī language in the Kharosthi scripts to Sanskrit language and Brahmi script. Many great diversity of genres and types of texts within this collection” [34:36–35:29; emphasis ours].
→ “Unfortunately, a lot of this material comes from clandestine archaeological digs, so the British Library material … actually turned up at the British Library with just the pots … and the individual manuscripts had been taken out and put in Indian pickle jars … and then transported there. Now, this results in damage. It also results in loss of contextual information. … Now, you know, that’s unfortunate, that’s just how it happened. It was not in our control” [59:03–59:41].

→ “Most of our sources are not properly provenanced. They are the result of … lootings and, you know, it’s very hard to say where any of these things come from” [19:00–19:09].

2023

→ “These were first discovered in around the middle of 1990s, and a group of these manuscripts was donated to the British Library in London“ [12:32–12:44; emphasis ours].
→ “If things go right, there’s a large new collection of these manuscripts, which will become available. There’s something going on now in Pakistan. There’s a program to retrieve these manuscripts, and in fact I’ve seen them, but they’re rolled up” [15:59–16:19].
→ “When we find them they’re rolled up, and the problem is: birchbark when … it’s 2000 years old it’s extremely fragile. So, when we find these things if we’re lucky, we get a whole role that holds a manuscript or large part of a manuscript that’s rolled up. Unrolling it is a huge problem and mistakes have been made. I won’t name any names—people who shouldn’t have unrolled them got involved and caused a lot of mess. I mean, these things, if you touch it too hard it’ll crumble into pieces” [17:58–18:47; emphasis ours].