Literary and Visual Narratives in Gandhāran Buddhist Manuscripts and Material Cultures

Around the beginning of the Common Era, local patrons and powerful regional rulers fuelled the production of early Buddhist literary and material cultures in ancient Gandhāra. Their support contributed to the growth of Buddhist stūpas and residential monasteries in the Peshawar basin and neighboring regions of the Swat and Kabul valleys of northwestern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan (Figure 13.1).