The major issue of the project HisTochText was the assessment of the manuscript culture of Buddhism during the first half of the first millennium CE, in Central Asia, precisely in the Tarim Basin, in present-day Xinjiang, China. This issue is linked to the rise of literacy among local peoples, to wit the “Tocharians” who spoke two related languages (Tocharian A and Tocharian B) of Indo-European descent. These peoples were originally illiterate, they acquired their written culture after their conversion to Buddhism, and underwent strong influence of the Indo-Buddhist culture coming from the West, that is from Gandhāra (province centred on Peshawar, in present-day Pakistan, and covering part of present-day Afghanistan), around the turn of CE. This main issue has relevant consequences for understanding the propagation of Buddhism in Asia, along the oases which border the net of roads making the so-called Silk Road, in the intermediate region between the Iranian and Indian worlds, in the West, and the Chinese world, in the East. The past history of the Silk Road is exemplary for understanding the contacts of peoples, languages, cultures, religions, technologies, which belong to the agenda of geopolitics and international relations until present time. In addition, the multi-disciplinary methodologies and results of HisTochText can encourage students and scholars of different countries and institutions to keep working in cooperation on the archives containing the discoveries (manuscripts, artefacts) issued from the expeditions of the beginning of 20th century CE which brought to light new facets of the Silk Road.
The overall objectives of the HisTochText project were oriented along different axes and resorted to complementary methodologies: philology, linguistics, digital humanities, manuscriptology, investigation of the materiality of documents. The basis of the documentation consisted in the Sanskrit and Tocharian manuscripts issued from the expedition led by Paul Pelliot in the Tarim Basin in 1906-1908, and kept in the Pelliot collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris. These manuscripts have been found in Buddhist sites of the Kucha region, and can be dated roughly between 5th and 8th century CE. Therefore, they may provide a consistent picture for the epoch of the flourishing of Buddhism in a specific area of Central Asia.
