Preface

The present publication in progress is the first attempt to compile a comprehensive dictionary of the Gāndhārī language. The editors started work on their Dictionary in the year 2002, when they were at the University of Washington, from a digital text of the index to John Brough’s edition of the Khotan Dharmapada. Between November 2002 and February 2003, a student assistant (Tho To) programmed the first version of the database system that forms the foundation for the Dictionary as well as its sister publications, the Gāndhārī Catalog and Bibliography, and he continued improving it until his graduation in March 2005. In September 2003, Glass took up a research fellowship at Bukkyo University, and over the course of the following four years he single‐handedly programmed a new version of the database software that, with ongoing improvements, continues to be in use. During this time, Baums continued work on the Dictionary at the University of Washington, supervising the student helper and adding items to the Catalog and Bibliography. By September 2007, the database contained digital texts for the six Gāndhārī manuscripts then published and for a total of 486 inscriptions.

A two‐year grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the years 2007–09 made it possible for Baums and Glass to rejoin forces at the University of Washington, and they were able to employ a number of student assistants (Haley Doan, Douglas Querl, Robert Mullen, Glory Choe, Matthew Nelson, Shelly Horn and Donald Craig) to help with data‐entry, image‐formatting and programming tasks. The year 2008 saw the addition of texts for the 782 Central Asian documents edited in Boyer, Rapson and Senart and Burrow 1937 (digitized with Mariner Padwa in connection with his dissertation work at Harvard University). At the end of 2008, Glass took up employment with the Microsoft Corporation and Baums continued to coordinate work on the Dictionary at the University of Washington.

As it became clear that the Dictionary would benefit from long‐term support in order to reach completion, the editors together with Ingo Strauch of the Freie Universität Berlin began to explore the possibility of an additional base for Gāndhārī studies under the auspices of the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities. In April 2009, a first application was submitted to the Union with the support of Jens‐Uwe Hartmann of the Ludwig‐Maximilians-Universität München and Harry Falk of the Freie Universität Berlin. In March 2010, Baums left the University of Washington to take up a research fellowship at Bukkyo University, and in September 2010 he joined the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught Sanskrit, Pali, Gāndhārī and Buddhism while continuing to work with Glass on the Dictionary, Catalog and Bibliography.

Funding for the long‐term project Buddhist Manuscripts from Gandhāra, under the auspices of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities and based at the University of Munich, was approved in November 2011. This project contributes to the edition of the currently known Gāndhārī manuscript material (with a focus on the British Library, Bajaur and Split Collections) and provides additional support to the Dictionary of Gāndhārī. The editors of the Dictionary are continuing their joint endeavor from their bases in Munich and Seattle, adding coverage for newly published Gāndhārī texts as they appear.

Completeness and Access

The Dictionary source‐text collection consists of all published Gāndhārī texts currently known (with the exception of a small number of coin legends that are in the process of being added), using the best available editions as base texts and other editions for variants. Where necessary, the Dictionary editors correct and improve the published texts; such changes are justified in footnotes to their digital versions. All published manuscripts and the majority of inscriptions and Central Asian documents are lemmatized, morphologically marked and described in Dictionary articles. Published samples from manuscripts under edition are likewise covered, and will be updated as further samples and eventually full editions are published. At this time the Dictionary contains 10,044 articles with a total of 70,561 references. The Gandhari.org website makes all published Gāndhārī material available to the general public, both through the Dictionary search interface and in the form of full texts accessible through the Catalog of Gāndhārī Texts.

Conventions and Usage

The abbreviations used for the source texts of the Dictionary follow the established conventions of the Critical Pāli Dictionary, the Abkürzungsverzeichnis zur buddhistischen Literatur in Indien und Südostasien and the Gandhāran Buddhist Texts series. They aim for brevity as well as for clarity within the range of texts covered. Because they had to take into account the established abbreviation systems, and because several new abbreviations had to be added, two different abbreviatory styles coexist: (1) Abhidh, Bps, Dhp, etc., and (2) ASP, EĀ, KaVā, etc. Complete consistency of abbreviation style has not been an aim, since it would come at the expense of breaking with established conventions and would make the Dictionary less accessible for its readers, particularly those who wish to use it in conjunction with dictionaries of other Buddhist languages.

Our knowledge of Gāndhārī literature continues to expand and change at a rapid pace, but remains incomplete. To accommodate this state of affairs the Dictionary employs three different types of abbreviations: (1) abbreviations for specific texts (e.g., Dhp, SaṅgCm), (2) abbreviations for genre classifications rather than texts (e.g., Av, MSū), and (3) abbreviations for unclassified manuscripts, inscriptions, wood documents or coin legends (e.g., CKM 89, CKI 249). Abbreviations of the first two types use superscript letters and numbers to distinguish between different manuscript instances of the same text or genre. As more literary texts are identified and new manuscripts come to light, abbreviations for existing items will be made more specific by switching from type (3) to (2) or (1) or by adding distinguishing superscripts, and new abbreviations will be added to the list. The overall abbreviation system of the Dictionary will, however, remain stable, and the resolution of individual abbreviations is provided in the digital version of the Dictionary on mouseclick. Non‐literary texts are always referred to by their stable catalog numbers. In the following overview, those published sources that are already covered in the Dictionary (whether in full or in the available samples) are given in normal font color; sources that are in the process of being edited and that will be covered in the Dictionary when they are published are given in grey.

 

The Dictionary uses the following system of text‐critical marks in its source texts:

 

The headwords of the Dictionary can be searched by means of the search box in the menubar in the upper right portion of the screen. Search strings can be entered in either the most commonly used Indological transliteration scheme or in the Harvard-Kyoto scheme. By default, the Dictionary will display headwords that begin with the search string. More complicated patterns can be searched for by means of the following operators:

 

Headword, source‐spelling, Sanskrit and Pali searches also allow the use of regular expressions. The headwords of articles matching a search string are displayed on the left‐hand side of the screen. Clicking on any of the headwords displays the corresponding article in the right‐hand portion of the screen. Articles consist of an etymological section, indication of the word class, English translation, a summary of forms arranged by morphological category, and complete citations. Clicking on any line number in the citation section displays this line in a pop‐up box. Clicking on the abbreviation for a text in the citation section opens up the complete text in a separate window or browser tab.

To increase the value of Gandhari.org as a research tool for Buddhist philology, four Sanskrit dictionaries and one Pali dictionary are provided under the same search interface as the Dictionary of Gāndhārī: Monier‐Williams’s Sanskrit‐English Dictionary, Edgerton’s Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Dictionary, Oguibénine’s supplements to Edgerton’s dictionary, Bechert, Röhrborn and Hartmann’s Sanskrit‐Wörterbuch der buddhistischen Texte aus den Turfan‐Funden (only headwords), and the Pali Text Society’s Pali‐English Dictionary. When switching between these dictionaries by means of the menubar, the last search term is remembered. This makes it possible to look up a word in one dictionary and then compare the definition of the same word in another dictionary without having to reenter it.

Acknowledgements

The editors have been fortunate to receive support through their employment by the following institutions: the University of Washington, the Danish Research Agency, the Society for the Promotion of Buddhism, Bukkyo University, Leiden University, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Munich. The employment of student helpers for the initial programming and data‐entry tasks was made possible by a subvention from the Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project (2002–05) and by funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a private sponsor (2007–10); special thanks are due to Richard Salomon and Collett Cox for securing this funding, and to Youngie Yoon for administrating it. Boris Oguibénine and the Council of the Pali Text Society gave their kind permission to include digital versions of their lexicographic works on Gandhari.org. The establishment of the Buddhist Manuscripts from Gandhāra project and the additional support that it provides for the Dictionary were made possible by the active and ongoing help of Jens‐Uwe Hartmann and Harry Falk; the editors would like to express their gratitude to them, to Ingo Strauch, and to the anonymous reviewers of the project proposal to the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities. Last not least, the editors are indebted to the users of their Dictionary around the world whose comments have led to countless improvements.