sees the first wave of Buddhist missionary work as associated with Gāndhārī and the Kharoṣṭhī script, and tentatively with the Dharmaguptaka sect. Available evidence also indicates that the first Buddhist missions to Khotan were carried out by the Dharmaguptaka sect, and used a Kharoṣṭhī-written Gāndhārī. However, there is evidence that other sects and traditions of Buddhism also used Gāndhārī, and evidence that the Dharmaguptaka sect also used Sanskrit at times. Starting in the first century of the common era, there was a large trend toward a type of Gāndhārī which was heavily Sanskritized. Buddhist manuscripts in Gāndhāri Until 1994, the only Gāndhāri manuscript available to the scholars was a birch bark manuscript of a Buddhist text, the Dharmapāda, discovered at Kohmāri Mazār near Hotan in Xinjiang in 1893 CE. From 1994 on, a large number of fragmentary manuscripts of Buddhist texts, seventy-seven altogether, were discovered in eastern Afghanistan and Western Pakistan. These include: 29 fragments of birch-bark scrolls of British Library collection consisting of parts of the Dharmapada, Anavatapta Gāthā, the Rhinoceros Sūtra, Sangitiparyaya and a collection of sutras from the Ekottara Āgama. 129 fragments of palm leaf folios of Schøyen Collection, 27 fragments of palm-leaf folios of Hirayama collection and 18 fragments of palm leaf folios of Hayashidera collection consisting of the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra and the Bhadrakalpikā Sūtra. 24 birch-bark scrolls of Senior collection consists of mostly different sutras and the Anavatapta Gāthā. 8 fragments of a single birch-bark scroll and 2 small fragments of another scroll of University of Washington collection consisting of probably an Abhidharma text or other scholastic commentaries. Translations from Gāndhāri Mahayana Buddhist Pure Land sūtras were brought from Gandhāra to China as early as 147 CE, when the Kushan monk Lokakṣema began translating the first Buddhist sutras into Chinese. The earliest of these translations show evidence of having been translated from Gāndhārī. It is also known that manuscripts in the Kharoṣṭhī script existed in China during this period. References Bibliography Further reading Gandhari.org Complete Corpus, Catalog, Bibliography and Dictionary of Gāndhārī texts See also Pre-Islamic scripts in Afghanistan Indo-Aryan languages Buddhism in Afghanistan Buddhism in Pakistan Prakrit languages