Dhammapada in the context of "Sangha (Buddhism)"

Gāndhārī was an Indo-Aryan Prakrit language found mainly in texts dated between the 3rd century BCE and 4th century CE in the region of Gandhāra, located in the northwestern Indian subcontinent. The language was heavily used by the former Buddhist cultures of Central Asia and has been found as far away as eastern China, in inscriptions at Luoyang and Anyang.

Gandhari served as an official language of the Kushan Empire and various central Asian kingdoms, including Khotan and Shanshan. It appears on coins, inscriptions and texts, notably the Gandhāran Buddhist texts. It is notable among the Prakrits for having some archaic phonology, for its relative isolation and independence, for being partially within the influence of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean and for its use of the Kharoṣṭhī script, compared to Brahmic scripts used by other Prakrits.

The Gandhāran Buddhist texts are the oldest Buddhist manuscripts yet discovered, dating from about the 1st century BCE to 3rd century CE and found in the northwestern outskirts of Pakistan. They represent the literature of Gandharan Buddhism and are written in the Gāndhārī language which has been grouped by many scholars in the Dardic language family. The texts constitute the largest collection of Gāndhārī manuscripts known to date and are now housed at the Islamabad Museum in Pakistan.

They were sold to European and Japanese institutions and individuals, and are currently being recovered and studied by several universities. The Gandhāran texts are in a considerably deteriorated form (their survival alone is extraordinary), but educated guesses about reconstruction have been possible in several cases using both modern preservation techniques and more traditional textual scholarship, comparing previously known Pāli and Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit versions of texts. Other Gandhāran Buddhist texts—"several and perhaps many"—have been found over the last two centuries but lost or destroyed.

Birch bark manuscripts are documents written on pieces of the outer layer of birch bark, which was commonly used for writing before the mass production of paper. Evidence of birch bark for writing goes back many centuries and appears in various cultures. The oldest such manuscripts are the numerous Gandhāran Buddhist texts from approximately the 1st century CE, from what is now Afghanistan. They contain among the earliest known versions of significant Buddhist scriptures, including a Dhammapada, discourses of Buddha that include the Rhinoceros Sutra, Avadanas and Abhidharma texts.

Sanskrit birch bark manuscripts written with Brahmi script have been dated to the first few centuries CE. Several early Sanskrit writers, such as Kālidāsa (c. 4th century CE), Sushruta (c. 3rd century CE), and Varāhamihira (6th century CE) mention its use for manuscripts. The bark of Betula utilis (Himalayan Birch) is still used today in India and Nepal for writing sacred mantras. Russian texts discovered in Veliky Novgorod have been dated to approximately the 11th to 15th centuries CE. Most of those documents are letters written by various people in a local dialect, Old Novgorodian. The Irish language's native writing system Ogham, sometimes called the "tree alphabet", was traditionally attributed to the god Ogma who wrote a proscription on birch to Lugh, warning him; the text of this proscription can be found in the Book of Ballymote. The first letter of Ogham is beith; beithe means "birch".

Jules Léon Dutreuil de Rhins (2 January 1846 – 5 June 1894) was a French geographer and explorer, born at Saint-Étienne.

He took part as a midshipman of naval volunteers in the expedition to Mexico and was an ensign during the Franco-Prussian War. From 1871 to 1876 he was captain of a foreign-going ship, in 1876–1877 commanded the Scorpion of the King of Annam's navy, and in 1882 was Egyptian correspondent of the Temps. From 1891 to 1894 he explored Chinese Turkestan (East Turkestan) and the most inaccessible and least-known regions of northern and western Tibet. He was murdered by locals at a small town in eastern Tibet.

Channa, also written as Chhanna, (Pali: Channa; Sanskrit: Chandaka) (6th century BCE, in what is now Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, India) was a royal servant and head charioteer of Prince Siddhartha, who was to become the Buddha. Channa later became a disciple of the Buddha (bhikkhu) and achieved arahantship, as is described in the 78th verse of the Dhammapada.

Channa was a servant in the court of King Śuddhodana who was entrusted to attend to the needs of Siddhartha, who had been lavished and pampered in a series of purpose-built palaces in order to shield him from thoughts of pain and suffering. This was done due to a prophecy by the ascetic Asita, who predicted that Siddhartha would renounce the throne to become a spiritual leader were he to contemplate human suffering. Channa was the servant who served as the charioteer pulled by the horse Kanthaka, when Siddhartha saw the Four sights whilst meeting his subjects in the Sakya capital Kapilavastu, which prompted his decision to renounce the world.