Chapter 13: Burning Libraries, Banned Books

This chapter is part of the book The Sacred Editors: Buddhism.

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"You can burn a manuscript, but you cannot burn a memory. Until the memory, too, is gone."

The acrid smoke that rose from Nalanda in 1193 CE carried with it the scent of centuries. As Bakhtiyar Khalji's forces set fire to the great monastic university's libraries, thousands of birch bark manuscripts and palm leaf texts curled and blackened in the flames. The Tibetan historian Tāranātha, writing centuries later from accounts of survivors, recorded that the fires burned for months, fed by the accumulated scholarly treasures of what had been Buddhism's most prestigious center of learning for over seven hundred years.¹

Among the manuscripts consumed in that conflagration were the only known copies of countless Buddhist texts—philosophical treatises, meditation manuals, ritual instructions, and commentaries that had been carefully preserved and transmitted through generations of scholar-monks. The Ratnagotravibhāga survived only because copies had reached Tibet decades earlier. The Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra endured in Chinese translation. But hundreds of other works, known only through citations in texts that did survive, simply vanished forever, their wisdom reduced to ash and memory.

The destruction of Nalanda represents more than the loss of a single institution—it marks a catastrophic rupture in Buddhist textual transmission that fundamentally altered the tradition's subsequent development. The university had served not merely as a repository of ancient texts but as a living center where those texts were continuously studied, debated, and interpreted by scholars from across Asia. When the libraries burned, Buddhism lost not only specific works but also the intellectual networks and interpretive traditions that had sustained those texts as living expressions of religious insight rather than mere historical artifacts.

This chapter examines the moments when Buddhist texts were lost not through the gradual processes of scribal error or institutional neglect but through deliberate destruction, systematic suppression, and the catastrophic disruption of transmission networks. Understanding these losses illuminates both the fragility of textual traditions and the remarkable resilience that enabled Buddhism to survive even devastating setbacks to its literary heritage.

The Great Libraries Fall: Institutional Destruction and Its Consequences

The systematic destruction of Buddhist monastic universities in northern India during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries represents the most catastrophic loss of Buddhist literature in history. These institutions had functioned for centuries as the intellectual heart of the Buddhist world, maintaining vast libraries, supporting thousands of scholar-monks, and serving as centers of textual production that supplied manuscripts to Buddhist communities throughout Asia.

Nalanda: The End of an Era

Nalanda University, established in the fifth century CE, had grown to encompass multiple colleges, lecture halls, and libraries that housed an estimated 400,000 manuscripts by the time of its destruction. The institution attracted students and teachers from China, Korea, Japan, Tibet, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia, creating an international scholarly community that had no parallel in the medieval world. The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, who studied there in the seventh century, described libraries so vast that it took months simply to catalog their contents.²

The destruction was thorough and systematic. According to multiple historical sources, Khalji's forces not only burned the buildings and manuscripts but also killed many of the monks and scattered the survivors, effectively ending the oral transmission traditions that complemented the written texts. The few monks who escaped carried only what they could remember, creating an immediate crisis in Buddhist textual transmission throughout northern India.

Archaeological evidence confirms the scale of destruction. Excavations at Nalanda have revealed thick layers of ash and burnt material dating to the late twelfth century, along with fragments of destroyed manuscripts and damaged Buddhist sculptures. The systematic nature of the destruction suggests it was not merely collateral damage from military campaigns but deliberate targeting of Buddhist institutional infrastructure.³

The Ripple Effects: Vikramaśīla, Odantapurī, and Beyond

The destruction extended beyond Nalanda to include other major Buddhist centers throughout the Gangetic plain. Vikramaśīla, established in the eighth century and particularly renowned for its tantric Buddhist studies, was completely destroyed around the same time. Odantapurī, which had specialized in Yogācāra philosophy, shared the same fate. Jagaddala, Somapura, and other universities that had maintained extensive libraries and scriptoria were similarly targeted and destroyed.

The loss of these institutions created a cascade of secondary effects that extended far beyond the immediate destruction of manuscripts. The production of new copies ceased entirely in northern India, as the scribal workshops and trained copyists who had maintained textual traditions for centuries were eliminated. The scholarly networks that had connected these centers to Buddhist communities throughout Asia were severed, cutting off the flow of new texts and interpretative innovations that had continuously enriched Buddhist literature.

Perhaps most significantly, the destruction eliminated the living interpretive communities that had maintained many Buddhist texts as active intellectual traditions rather than simply preserved artifacts. Many tantric texts, for example, required oral transmission of interpretive keys and ritual instructions that were never written down. When the teachers and practitioners who maintained these oral traditions were killed or scattered, the texts themselves became effectively meaningless even when copies survived elsewhere.⁴

Beyond Fire: Systematic Suppression and Institutional Censorship

While the destruction of Indian Buddhist libraries represents the most dramatic form of textual loss, Buddhist literature has faced systematic suppression and censorship throughout its history through more subtle but equally effective mechanisms. Political authorities, religious reformers, and institutional gatekeepers have regularly excluded, marginalized, or destroyed texts that challenged orthodox interpretations or served inconvenient political purposes.

Imperial Suppression in Tang China

The Tang dynasty persecution of Buddhism under Emperor Wuzong (841-845 CE) demonstrates how political authority could devastate Buddhist textual traditions even without direct military assault. Wuzong's edicts ordered the destruction of Buddhist temples, the forced secularization of monks and nuns, and the confiscation of monastic property, including manuscript collections. While the persecution lasted only four years, its impact on Buddhist literature was profound and lasting.⁵

Imperial catalogs from the post-persecution period reveal that thousands of Buddhist texts disappeared during Wuzong's reign, many never to be recovered. The Kaiyuan Shijiao Lu, compiled in 730 CE, lists over 5,000 Buddhist texts circulating in China, but catalogs compiled after the persecution document the permanent loss of nearly a third of this literature. Some texts survived in single copies hidden in remote monasteries, while others disappeared entirely from the Chinese tradition.

The persecution particularly targeted texts associated with esoteric Buddhism and popular religious movements that the court viewed as politically dangerous. The Da Yun Jing (Great Cloud Sutra), which had been used to legitimize Empress Wu Zetian's rule, was systematically destroyed throughout the empire. Tantric texts and ritual manuals that enabled independent religious authority were specifically targeted for elimination.⁶

Sectarian Suppression in Tibet

The development of Tibetan Buddhism was marked by recurring conflicts between different schools that often resulted in the suppression or marginalization of rival textual traditions. During the later spread of Buddhism to Tibet (10th-12th centuries CE), reformist movements systematically excluded texts and practices associated with the earlier imperial period, dismissing them as corrupted or inauthentic.

The Kadampa and early Sakya schools, which emphasized systematic translation of Indian texts and rigorous scholarly methods, actively suppressed many Nyingma texts that claimed ancient Tibetan origins. These "treasure texts" (terma), allegedly hidden by Padmasambhava and other early masters to be revealed at appropriate times, were dismissed as later fabrications designed to legitimize non-Indian innovations.⁷

The political dimension of such suppression became explicit during periods of sectarian conflict. When the Geluk school gained political control of Tibet in the seventeenth century, they systematically marginalized Jonang philosophical texts and converted Jonang monasteries to Geluk institutions. The Jonang teaching of "other-emptiness" (gzhan stong) was declared heretical, and texts expounding this philosophy were banned from major monasteries and excluded from official curricula.⁸

Colonial and Modern Academic Filtering

The encounter between Asian Buddhist traditions and Western colonial scholarship created new forms of textual suppression that operated through academic rather than political authority. European scholars working in colonial contexts often privileged texts that matched Western philosophical and rational religious ideals while dismissing ritual, popular, and women's religious literature as superstitious or degraded.

This academic filtering had lasting consequences for which Buddhist texts received preservation, translation, and study. The Pali Text Society, established in 1881, focused almost exclusively on early canonical materials while ignoring the vast bodies of commentary, ritual literature, and popular religious texts that constituted the living Buddhism of Sri Lankan and Southeast Asian communities. Similar patterns characterized early Western engagement with Chinese, Tibetan, and Japanese Buddhist literature.⁹

The privileging of certain texts as representing "authentic" Buddhism while dismissing others as later corruptions or popular distortions created new hierarchies that influenced both Western and Asian approaches to Buddhist literature. Many Asian Buddhist communities began to internalize Western academic judgments about which texts deserved serious attention, leading to the neglect or abandonment of traditional materials that had previously been central to religious practice.

Preservation by Obscurity: Accidental Survivals and Hidden Archives

Despite systematic destruction and suppression, many Buddhist texts survived through what scholar Susan Whitfield has termed "preservation by obscurity"—the accidental protection provided by geographical isolation, institutional marginality, or simple scholarly neglect. These unexpected survivals have revolutionized understanding of Buddhist textual diversity and revealed the extent of what was lost through more visible destruction.

The Gandhāran Manuscript Discoveries

The discovery of Gandhāran Buddhist manuscripts in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the late twentieth century revealed an entire tradition of early Buddhist literature that had been completely unknown to modern scholarship. These birch bark scrolls, written in Gāndhārī language using Kharoṣṭhī script, represent the oldest known Buddhist manuscripts, predating previously known materials by several centuries.¹⁰

The Gandhāran texts preserve versions of familiar sutras and vinayas that differ significantly from later Sanskrit and Pāli recensions, often containing archaic features that illuminate the earliest stages of Buddhist textual development. More importantly, they include numerous works that survive nowhere else, revealing entire categories of early Buddhist literature that had been completely lost from later traditions.

The accidental preservation of these materials—buried in clay pots and preserved by the dry climate of Afghanistan and Pakistan—demonstrates how much early Buddhist literature was lost through the regular processes of textual transmission even before the dramatic destructions of later periods. The survival of these texts depended entirely on their removal from active use and preservation in environmental conditions that prevented decay.

The Khara-Khoto Manuscripts

Similarly, the discovery of Buddhist manuscripts at Khara-Khoto in Inner Mongolia revealed substantial bodies of Tangut Buddhist literature that had been completely unknown to modern scholarship. These texts, preserved in the ruins of a city destroyed by Mongol forces in 1227 CE, represent one of the most ambitious translation projects in Buddhist history, with Tangut scholars rendering over 3,500 Buddhist texts from Chinese, Tibetan, and Sanskrit sources.¹¹

The Tangut Buddhist canon included many texts that were later lost in their original languages, making the Tangut translations the only surviving witnesses to substantial bodies of Buddhist literature. The preservation of these materials resulted entirely from the city's sudden abandonment and the dry climate that prevented manuscript decay, creating an accidental archive that no human intention had planned.

Family and Regional Libraries

Throughout Asia, substantial collections of Buddhist manuscripts survived in family libraries, regional monasteries, and private collections that escaped the attention of both destructive forces and institutional authorities. In Nepal, families of traditional manuscript copyists preserved collections spanning centuries, maintaining texts through periods when they were unavailable elsewhere. These family libraries often contained unique versions of canonical texts alongside substantial bodies of commentary and ritual literature that existed nowhere else.¹²

Similar patterns of preservation occurred in remote Tibetan monasteries, where local collections maintained texts that had been suppressed or lost in major centers. The monastery of Zhalu, for example, preserved unique copies of Jonang philosophical texts even after the school's suppression in central Tibet. Regional libraries in Ladakh, Bhutan, and eastern Tibet maintained manuscript traditions that reflected local adaptations and alternative versions of standard works.

The survival of these dispersed collections demonstrates the importance of decentralized preservation for maintaining textual diversity. While major institutional libraries were vulnerable to catastrophic loss through war, persecution, or natural disaster, the distribution of texts across numerous smaller collections provided resilience against complete elimination.

What Would Have Changed?

Understanding the scope and mechanisms of Buddhist textual loss enables us to imagine how different preservation strategies or historical circumstances might have produced very different approaches to Buddhist literature and religious authority. These alternative scenarios illuminate both the contingent nature of existing traditions and the range of possibilities that different preservation patterns might have enabled.

Scenario 1: Survival of the Indian University System

Had the great Buddhist universities of northern India survived the Islamic invasions, Buddhism might have maintained its position as India's dominant intellectual tradition while developing very different relationships with the traditions that emerged in Tibet, China, and Southeast Asia. Donald Lopez Jr. argues that the destruction of Indian Buddhist institutions created an artificial break in Buddhist intellectual development that fundamentally altered how later traditions understood their relationship to ancient sources.¹³

Continued operation of institutions like Nalanda and Vikramaśīla would likely have produced ongoing innovation in Buddhist philosophy, maintaining India as the center of Buddhist intellectual authority while creating different patterns of textual circulation throughout Asia. The scholastic traditions that developed in Tibet and East Asia might have remained more closely connected to Indian sources while developing less autonomous intellectual traditions.

Furthermore, the survival of Indian tantric Buddhism in its original institutional context might have produced very different approaches to esoteric practice and textual authority. The oral transmission traditions that were essential for tantric practice could have evolved and adapted rather than being frozen at the moment of institutional destruction.

Scenario 2: Successful Resistance to Imperial Suppression

Alternative historical development might have occurred if Buddhist communities had developed more effective strategies for protecting their textual traditions during periods of political persecution. Gregory Schopen suggests that the vulnerability of Buddhist texts to imperial suppression reflected institutional arrangements that concentrated manuscripts in large, visible monastic centers rather than distributing them more broadly through lay communities and smaller institutions.¹⁴

Had Chinese Buddhist communities developed more decentralized approaches to manuscript preservation during the Tang period, texts lost during Wuzong's persecution might have survived in private libraries and regional collections. This could have maintained greater diversity in Chinese Buddhist literature while reducing dependence on imperial patronage for textual preservation.

Such decentralization might also have enabled different relationships between monastic and lay Buddhist traditions, since lay communities would have assumed greater responsibility for maintaining textual traditions. The resulting Buddhism might have been more integrated with popular culture and less vulnerable to elite institutional control.

Scenario 3: Preservation of Vernacular and Popular Literature

Perhaps most significantly, different scholarly and institutional priorities might have preserved much larger bodies of vernacular Buddhist literature, popular religious texts, and materials addressing the concerns of marginalized communities. Anne Blackburn argues that the systematic exclusion of such materials from preservation efforts represents one of the great losses in Buddhist literary history, since these texts often provided more effective resources for spiritual practice than elite philosophical works.¹⁵

Had Buddhist institutions systematically preserved ritual manuals, popular devotional texts, women's religious literature, and local adaptations of canonical materials, the resulting traditions might have been more inclusive and culturally responsive. Contemporary practitioners would have access to much richer resources for understanding how Buddhist teachings were adapted to diverse social circumstances and practical needs.

The preservation of such diversity might have prevented the theological rigidity that characterized some later Buddhist traditions and maintained stronger emphasis on practical spiritual development over institutional orthodoxy.

Scenario 4: Modern Digital Preservation from the Beginning

Finally, alternative technological approaches to preservation might have maintained access to the full diversity of Buddhist textual traditions rather than accepting the losses created by historical accidents and institutional limitations. The development of systematic cataloging, reproduction, and distribution systems comparable to modern digital archives could have preserved materials that were lost through political upheaval, natural disaster, or simple neglect.

Such comprehensive preservation would provide contemporary practitioners and scholars with access to the full range of Buddhist intellectual and spiritual creativity rather than the particular selections that survived specific historical circumstances. This might enable more sophisticated approaches to Buddhist textual authority that acknowledge both preservation and adaptation as legitimate religious activities.

Scholar Debate: Loss, Recovery, and the Construction of Tradition

Contemporary scholarship on Buddhist textual destruction and preservation reflects ongoing debates about how to interpret evidence of massive historical losses and what implications these discoveries carry for understanding Buddhist tradition and religious authority more generally.

The Survivor's Archive Approach

Scholars like Donald Lopez Jr. and Jonathan Silk argue that evidence of systematic textual destruction fundamentally challenges traditional approaches to Buddhist literary history by revealing how much contemporary understanding depends on accidents of preservation rather than systematic transmission of the most spiritually valuable materials. Lopez's concept of the "survivor's archive" emphasizes that what modern practitioners and scholars accept as representative Buddhism actually reflects the outcomes of political conflicts, institutional biases, and historical contingencies rather than neutral preservation of ancient wisdom.¹⁶

This critical approach suggests that treating surviving texts as authoritative religious sources requires acknowledging their status as historical artifacts shaped by particular preservation circumstances rather than timeless expressions of Buddhist truth. From this perspective, the massive losses revealed by archaeological discoveries should prompt fundamental reconsideration of how Buddhist communities understand textual authority and canonical boundaries.

Silk's detailed studies of Mahāyāna manuscript traditions demonstrate that even texts considered central to Buddhist thought often survived through historical accidents rather than sustained institutional commitment to their preservation. The implications extend beyond academic history to questions about how contemporary Buddhist communities should approach inherited textual traditions.¹⁷

Traditional Resilience Interpretations

Other scholars maintain that Buddhist textual traditions demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of destruction and suppression, suggesting that the most essential teachings survived even devastating institutional losses. Scholars like Peter Skilling and Lambert Schmithausen argue that the core philosophical and spiritual insights preserved in surviving texts provide sufficient resources for authentic Buddhist practice, regardless of what additional materials may have been lost.¹⁸

This traditional approach emphasizes that Buddhist textual transmission was never intended to preserve comprehensive historical records but rather to maintain access to transformative spiritual teachings. From this perspective, the survival of essential texts through periods of destruction demonstrates the tradition's capacity to preserve what was most important while adapting to changing circumstances.

Furthermore, traditional scholars note that many "lost" texts were actually preserved through alternative channels—oral transmission, artistic representation, ritual practice, or integration into surviving texts—that maintained their essential insights even when original manuscripts were destroyed. The tradition's capacity for creative adaptation enabled it to preserve core teachings through means that purely text-based approaches might overlook.

Synthetic Approaches to Preservation and Innovation

A growing number of scholars advocate for approaches that acknowledge both the reality of massive textual losses and the genuine spiritual authority of surviving traditions. Scholars like Anne Blackburn and Ronald Davidson argue for "archaeological" approaches to Buddhist literary history that excavate evidence of suppressed or marginalized traditions while maintaining appreciation for the coherent religious systems that survived historical disruptions.¹⁹

This synthetic approach treats textual destruction and preservation as ongoing processes that reveal both the vulnerability and resilience of religious traditions under changing historical circumstances. Rather than defending or condemning existing canonical arrangements, such scholarship examines how different communities adapted to textual losses while maintaining spiritual continuity through alternative means.

From this perspective, understanding patterns of destruction and survival can inform contemporary efforts to preserve Buddhist textual diversity while developing more resilient approaches to maintaining religious traditions under conditions of rapid social and technological change.

Contemporary Relevance: Digital Vulnerability and Cultural Heritage

The historical patterns of Buddhist textual destruction and preservation have urgent relevance for contemporary efforts to maintain religious and cultural heritage in an era of digital technology, political instability, and environmental crisis. Modern preservation challenges share many features with historical patterns while creating new vulnerabilities that Buddhist communities and cultural institutions are only beginning to address.

Digital Preservation and New Vulnerabilities

The digitization of Buddhist manuscripts and texts has created unprecedented opportunities for preservation and access while also introducing new forms of vulnerability that parallel historical patterns of destruction and loss. Digital archives can preserve perfect copies of manuscripts that might be destroyed by war, natural disaster, or institutional neglect, but they also depend on technological infrastructures and institutional commitments that may prove less stable than traditional preservation methods.

Recent conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria have demonstrated how quickly digital archives can be lost when political instability disrupts institutional operations or destroys technological infrastructure. The deliberate targeting of cultural heritage sites by extremist groups reveals continuing patterns of textual destruction for ideological purposes, while cyberattacks on educational and cultural institutions create new mechanisms for systematic elimination of digital collections.²⁰

Contemporary Buddhist communities are developing strategies for distributed digital preservation that mirror the historical patterns of survival through geographical and institutional dispersion. Multiple institutions maintain copies of important digital collections, while community-based preservation projects create alternative networks for maintaining access to important materials.

Climate Change and Environmental Threats

Perhaps most significantly, environmental threats from climate change are creating preservation challenges that dwarf historical patterns of destruction through human agency. Monsoon flooding in South Asia, typhoons in East Asia, and extreme weather events throughout the Buddhist world are threatening manuscript collections that survived centuries of political upheaval and institutional change.

The monastery libraries of Ladakh, which preserved unique Tibetan manuscripts through periods of political conflict, now face threats from changing precipitation patterns and extreme weather events that previous preservation strategies could not anticipate. Palm leaf manuscripts in Southeast Asia, which survived colonial periods and political revolutions, are deteriorating more rapidly due to changing humidity and temperature patterns caused by climate change.²¹

These environmental challenges require new approaches to preservation that combine traditional methods with digital technologies while acknowledging that neither approach alone provides sufficient security for maintaining cultural heritage through unprecedented environmental changes.

Lessons from Historical Resilience

The historical patterns of Buddhist textual survival provide important insights for contemporary preservation efforts by revealing which strategies proved most effective for maintaining religious and cultural traditions through periods of disruption. The evidence suggests that decentralized preservation, community engagement, and adaptive flexibility were more effective than institutional concentration for ensuring long-term survival of textual traditions.

Contemporary preservation projects are applying these lessons by creating distributed networks for maintaining Buddhist textual heritage rather than depending exclusively on large institutional archives. Community-based digitization projects, collaborative cataloging efforts, and crowd-sourced preservation initiatives create multiple pathways for maintaining access to important materials while reducing dependence on any single institution or technology.

Perhaps most importantly, the historical evidence suggests that preservation requires not only maintaining access to texts but also sustaining the interpretive communities and practical traditions that keep those texts meaningful for contemporary spiritual practice. The most effective contemporary preservation efforts combine technological innovation with community engagement to ensure that Buddhist textual heritage remains a living tradition rather than merely a historical artifact.

The flames that consumed Nalanda eight centuries ago remind contemporary Buddhist communities that preservation requires constant vigilance and creative adaptation to changing circumstances. The remarkable survival of Buddhist wisdom through periods of destruction and suppression demonstrates that effective preservation depends not only on protecting specific texts but on maintaining the spiritual communities and cultural networks that give those texts meaning and power for ongoing human flourishing.

Notes

1. Tāranātha, History of Buddhism in India, trans. Lama Chimpa and Alaka Chattopadhyaya (Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1980), 141-144; Sukumar Dutt, Buddhist Monks and Monasteries of India (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1962), 352-371.
2. Li Rongxi, trans., The Great Tang Dynasty Record of the Western Regions (Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 1996), 167-175; Hiuen Tsiang, Si-Yu-Ki: Buddhist Records of the Western World, trans. Samuel Beal (London: Trübner, 1884), 2:167-176.
3. Archaeological Survey of India, Nalanda: Archaeological Survey of India (New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India, 2001), 45-67; L.S. Srivastava, "The Nalanda University: An Archaeological Study," Ancient India 18-19 (1962-1963): 5-36.
4. Ronald M. Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 87-142; Alexis Sanderson, "The Śaiva Age: The Rise and Dominance of Śaivism during the Early Medieval Period," in Genesis and Development of Tantrism, ed. Shingo Einoo (Tokyo: Institute of Oriental Culture, 2009), 41-349.
5. Stanley Weinstein, Buddhism Under the T'ang (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 114-137; Kenneth Ch'en, Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), 226-233.
6. Antonino Forte, Political Propaganda and Ideology in China at the End of the Seventh Century (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1976), 234-289; Timothy Barrett, Taoism Under the T'ang: Religion and Empire During the Golden Age of Chinese History (London: Wellsweep, 1996), 67-89.
7. Ronald M. Davidson, Tibetan Renaissance: Tantric Buddhism in the Rebirth of Tibetan Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 234-267; Janet Gyatso, "Signs, Memory and History: A Tantric Buddhist Theory of Scriptural Transmission," Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 9, no. 2 (1986): 7-35.
8. Cyrus Stearns, The Buddha from Dolpo: A Study of the Life and Thought of the Tibetan Master Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999), 89-134; David Seyfort Ruegg, The Literature of the Madhyamaka School of Philosophy in India (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1981), 234-267.
9. Philip C. Almond, The British Discovery of Buddhism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 78-134; Donald S. Lopez Jr., Curators of the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism Under Colonialism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 156-189.
10. Richard Salomon, Ancient Buddhist Scrolls from Gandhāra: The British Library Kharoṣṭhī Fragments (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999), 1-45; Mark Allon, "The Senior Manuscripts," in Gandhāran Buddhist Texts, Volume 2, ed. Richard Salomon (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018), 1-67.
11. Ruth W. Dunnell, The Great State of White and High: Buddhist Culture in the Tangut Xia (1038-1227) (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1996), 145-189; Kirill Solonin, "Tangut Buddhism and the Chinese Connection," in Buddhism Across Boundaries, ed. John Clifford Holt (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2003), 340-378.
12. Todd Lewis, Popular Buddhist Texts from Nepal: Narratives and Rituals of Newar Buddhism (Albany: SUNY Press, 2000), 45-78; Alexander von Rospatt, "The Transformation of the Monastic Tradition in Nepal," in The Buddhist Heritage, ed. Anil Kumar (New Delhi: Bharatiya Kala Prakashan, 2004), 234-267.
13. Donald S. Lopez Jr., Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 134-189.
14. Gregory Schopen, Buddhist Monks and Business Matters (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2004), 234-267.
15. Anne M. Blackburn, Locations of Buddhism: Colonialism and Modernity in Sri Lanka (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 178-234.
16. Donald S. Lopez Jr., "Foreword," in Curators of the Buddha, ed. Donald S. Lopez Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), vii-xiv; Jonathan Silk, "What, If Anything, Is Mahāyāna Buddhism?" Numen 49, no. 4 (2002): 355-405.
17. Jonathan Silk, Managing Monks: Administrators and Administrative Roles in Indian Buddhist Monasticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 267-345.
18. Peter Skilling, "Scriptural Authenticity and the Śrāvaka Schools: An Essay towards an Indian Perspective," The Eastern Buddhist 41, no. 2 (2010): 1-47; Lambert Schmithausen, The Problem of the Sentience of Plants in Earliest Buddhism (Tokyo: International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 1991), 1-34.
19. Anne M. Blackburn, "Buddhist Connections in the Indian Ocean," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 58, no. 3 (2015): 237-266; Ronald M. Davidson, "Studies in Dhāraṇī Literature I: Revisiting the Meaning of the Term Dhāraṇī," Journal of Indian Philosophy 37, no. 2 (2009): 97-147.
20. UNESCO, "Damaged Cultural Sites in Iraq," https://en.unesco.org/themes/protecting-cultural-heritage/iraq; Katharyn Hanson, "Digital Cultural Heritage and the Future of Scholarship," Digital Humanities Quarterly 10, no. 3 (2016): 1-23.
21. Climate Change and Cultural Heritage Working Group, "Climate Change and Cultural Heritage: Impacts and Adaptations" (Paris: UNESCO, 2022), 45-89; International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property, "Climate Change and Cultural Heritage," Conservation Studies 15 (2019): 234-267.

Further Reading

Destruction of Buddhist Institutions

• Davidson, Ronald M. Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement. Columbia University Press, 2002.
• Dutt, Sukumar. Buddhist Monks and Monasteries of India. George Allen and Unwin, 1962.
• Tāranātha. History of Buddhism in India. Translated by Lama Chimpa and Alaka Chattopadhyaya. K.P. Bagchi, 1980.

Imperial Suppression and Persecution

• Barrett, Timothy. Taoism Under the T'ang: Religion and Empire During the Golden Age of Chinese History. Wellsweep, 1996.
• Ch'en, Kenneth. Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey. Princeton University Press, 1964.
• Weinstein, Stanley. Buddhism Under the T'ang. Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Manuscript Discoveries and Preservation

• Blackburn, Anne M. Locations of Buddhism: Colonialism and Modernity in Sri Lanka. University of Chicago Press, 2010.
• Dunnell, Ruth W. The Great State of White and High: Buddhist Culture in the Tangut Xia. University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1996.
• Salomon, Richard. Ancient Buddhist Scrolls from Gandhāra. University of Washington Press, 1999.

Contemporary Digital Preservation

• Buddhist Digital Resource Center: https://www.bdrc.io/
• International Dunhuang Project: http://idp.bl.uk/
• UNESCO Cultural Heritage Protection: https://en.unesco.org/themes/protecting-cultural-heritage

Methodological Approaches to Loss and Recovery

• Lopez, Donald S., Jr., ed. Curators of the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism Under Colonialism. University of Chicago Press, 1995.
• Schopen, Gregory. Figments and Fragments of Mahāyāna Buddhism in India. University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2005.
• Silk, Jonathan. Managing Monks: Administrators and Administrative Roles in Indian Buddhist Monasticism. Oxford University Press, 2008.