Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : rethinking Buddhist manuscript cultures / Stephen C. Berkwitz, Juliane Schober, and Claudia Brown -- Why did the Gandharan Buddhists bury their manuscripts? / Richard Salomon -- Materiality and merit in Sri Lankan Buddhist manuscripts / Stephen C. Berkwitz -- Redaction, recitation, and writing : transmission of the Buddha's teachings in India in the early period / Peter Skilling -- Diverse aspects of the Mongolian Buddhist manuscript culture and realms of its influence / Vesna A. Wallace -- From words to books : Indian Buddhist manuscripts in the first millennium CE. / Jens-Uwe Hartmann -- Between Zhongfeng Mingben and Zhao Mengfu : Chan letters in their manuscript context / Natasha Heller - Two Buddhist librarians : the proximate mechanisms for Northern Thai Buddhist history / Justin McDaniel -- Emending perfection. prescript, postscript, and practice in Newar Buddhist manuscript culture / Christoph Emmrich -- Flowers for the dhamma : painted Buddhist palm-leaf manuscript covers from Sri Lanka / Bilinda Devage Nandadeva -- From text to image : copying as Buddhist practice in late fourteenth-century Sukhothai / M.L. Pattaratorn Chirapravati.