March 31, 2006

Birch-Bark Manuscripts Could Reveal When Buddhism Moved to China

By PETER MONAGHAN

BIRCH-BARK POTBOILER: In the small academic worlds of the history of Buddhism and Central Asia, much has hinged in the last few years on just what Mark Allon would find when he subjected a few scraps of birch bark to radiocarbon dating.

For several years, he and researchers at the Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project, jointly sponsored by the British Library and the University of Washington, have been studying the age and provenance of rolls of birch-bark manuscripts that began to turn