[Buddha-l] Re: Buddhist Intolerance?

[Stephen Hodge]

Mitchell Ginsberg wrote:

> I think of the Gilgit MSS that Heinz Bechert and others
> studied, left behind in high and dry caves before the arrival
> of some individuals from the West with the convincing
> argument of the sword, shall we say.

The anachronicity of this point has already been addressed, but some further 
comments of possible interest.  It might be that one is here inappropriately 
transposing the circumstances of the Qumran or the Nag Hammadi manuscripts 
to an Indic setting.   As far as I know, the general consensus is that the 
majority of these mss were buried by way of ritual disposal.  In many 
cultures, it was thought to be more respectful if worn-out books and 
manuscripts were suitable buried or stored somewhere safe like a cave or a 
geniza -- a custom to which modern scholars are indebted.  Though sometimes 
they are just a bit too late: I came across this recently  ".... but 
Yamauchi also told them that when he had visited the town of Zargaraan, east 
of Bamiyan, he had heard that in 1993 a landslide had uncovered a cave and a 
strong wind had blown manuscript fragments across the countryside".  A 
similar lost opportunity befell the Indian Buddhist Scholar Rahula 
Sankrityayana when he visited Samye Monastery in the 1930s in his hunt for 
Sanskrit manuscripts.  Whe he arrived, he was told that a few weeks earlier, 
part of a stupa within the monastery had collapsed and dozens of books came 
tumbling out.  Dutifully, the monks put them all back and cemented stones of 
the stupa back in place.  Probably all these were destroyed when Samye was 
decomissioned by the culturally advanced Chinese liberators.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge