Old scrolls, discussed

Stumbling around the internet, I just found myself reading about the earliest dated physical copies of the Buddhist scriptures.

For those who have been following (hello?), I find more appeal in the Mahayana branch of Buddhism, but know that it was a development out of earlier Buddhism as that is generally seen as defined by the "Pali canon".  

I had always assumed that the earliest examples of the Pali cannon had been more or less accurately dated, and that they would come from well before the dating of the earliest Mahayanan Sutras.

But no, it seems this is not the case at all.  First, remembering that the rough date for the birth of the "original" Buddha is about 560 BCE:

a.    despite the belief that the Pali texts were first committed to writing, rather than oral tradition,in Sri Lanka around the first century BCE (that is, like, 400 years after the death of Buddha, give or take!), it seems the earliest fragments of Pali texts come from around 550 to 650 CE in Burma.  (A full 1,000 years after its apparent founder.)  

b.    the Mahayana texts, however, have substantial bits dated to around 200CE:

The earliest accurately dated Mahayana texts are those translated by the Indoscythian monk Lokakṣema in the 2nd century CE, who came from Gandhāra to China. These include about ten Mahayana sutras translated before 186 CE, which constitute the earliest objectively dated Mahayana literature. Modern scholarship generally agrees that Mahayana sutras began to appear between the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE, but the earliest physical evidence with firm dating comes from Lokakṣema's Chinese translations around the mid-2nd century CE. These texts show developed Mahayana doctrines and literary style, indicating a prior phase of composition stretching back possibly a century or more before their translation.

This brief article on the Gandhara scrolls contains this surprise, too:

The scrolls contain linguistic treasures as well. They’re written in Gāndhārī, a vernacular derivative of Sanskrit; Kharoṣṭhī, the script used to actually set down the words on birch bark, derives from Aramaic, according to Salomon. 

There's also an article on line* that explains the (quite possibly mythical?) origins of the motivation for conversion of oral transmission to written:

Buddhist chronicles in Pali tell us that the hitherto recited Buddhist texts were written down in Sri Lanka in the early first century B.C. when a severe famine occurred.
As the population diminished, the Buddhist order feared that Buddhism would perish, for once monks who memorized and recited those texts were dead, the texts
themselves would disappear. Thus the Buddhist order wrote down the texts in order
to preserve them for posterity.2 Another legend says that King Kaniska (the late first
or early to middle second century A.D.) ordered Buddhist texts to be inscribed on
copper plates and kept in a stupa in Kashmir of northern India.3 Yet the written or
inscribed Buddhist texts themselves are not extant. Incidentally, Chinese Buddhist
texts were also inscribed on stones, which are much more durable than paper (the
usual writing material), as a precaution against the disappearance of the Buddhist
doctrine. Such a precaution was believed necessary both because Buddhism was
persecuted several times in China, and also because the mo-fa theory, which
held that the Buddhist teachings would soon disappear, became widely accepted. 

It also mentions that the Mahayan sutras were more likely to be committed to writing recorded from the start:

 Incidentally, Mahayana sutras, which are thought to have been gradually formed from about the first century B.C., are presumed in many cases to have been written down from the beginning because the texts themselves instruct the readers to copy them. In fact,
abundant copies of some Mahayana sutras are preserved in manuscript form in
Nepal. However, the Indic texts of other Mahayana sutras are not extant at all.

 There is also mention of how Indian emperor Asokha, around 260BCE, converted to Buddhism and had mention of it carved on pillars, etc, but did not apparently see the need to set down the texts in full.  

The estimate date of writing the scrolls aligns very closely to when the New Testament books were being written**:

Chapter 6 describes the palaeographic and linguistic features of the manuscripts.
The palaeographic evidence indicates that the manuscripts were probably written
between the earlier part of the first century A.D. and the age of Kaniska (the late first
or early to middle second century).  

So, it's a curious thing that the later branch of Buddhism actually has fairly substantially older original documentary evidence.     (And the fact that there was a lot of religious "commit it to writing" going on around the same time.)

Update:   I still don't understand how we know that the Pali canon was first committed to writing in Sri Lanka around the first century BCE, if we don't have manuscripts from then.   Let's see what AI (in the form of Perplexity) says:

Here is how scholars and tradition establish this dating despite the absence of original manuscripts: 

👉Oral transmission: The early Buddhist teachings were preserved orally for several centuries, passed down through meticulous memorization and communal recitation by monks. This oral tradition was considered highly reliable and central to preserving the teachings exactly as taught by the Buddha.
 

👉   The Sri Lankan chronicle Mahavamsa records that the Pali Canon was first committed to writing in the 1st century BCE to preserve it from loss due to famine, war, or decay. This event is linked to a formal Buddhist council held in Sri Lanka.

 👉 Linguistic and historical context: Scholars date the Pali Canon partly by comparing the language style to related ancient Prakrit languages and by cross-referencing historical events mentioned or implied in the texts with known timelines.

 👉  Archaeological evidence shows that the oldest surviving Pali manuscripts date much later, from around the 5th century CE onward, often on palm leaves or other materials which do not survive well over more than a millennium.

👉The notion of a fixed Pali Canon from 100 BCE onwards is supported by continued manuscript copying and commentary traditions in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, and references back to this origin in later texts.   

 

So, yeah, I knew for a long time that compared to Christianity, Buddhist had quite the "historicity" issue; what I didn't realise was that within the various Buddhist traditions, the apparent later branch had the earlier physical documents.

 

* it's downloadable but I can't find the link to it now - it's called  REVIEW ARTICLE
The Discovery of “the Oldest Buddhist Manuscripts” ENOMOTO FUMIO 

** the dates now believed for the writing of the various New Testament books range from around 50 to 125CE.