In April 2018, Professor Salomon’s Buddhist Literature of Ancient Gandhāra: An Introduction with Selected Translations, was published by Wisdom Publications as a volume in their “Classics of Indian Buddhism” Series. This volume is a distillation of the results of more than twenty years of study of the world’s oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts by Professor Salomon and his collaborators in the University of Washington Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project.
In contrast to project’s previous publications, which were mostly technical studies aimed at a specialist scholars, Buddhist Literature of Ancient Gandhāra presents the manuscripts and the discoveries that they have opened up to a more general audience. The intention of the book is thus to “mainstream” the newly recovered literature of Buddhist Gandhāra by making it accessible to non-specialist readers. Besides annotated translations of twelve representative manuscripts, the volume includes an introductory section explaining the historical context of the manuscripts, their importance for our knowledge of the early history of Buddhism in its Indian homeland, and their implications for the spread of Buddhism beyond India and into Central and East Asia.