Looking for a Gandhari Buddhist Language Politics

One topic that has long sustained the interest of Buddhist studies scholars and historians is the advent of writing in South Asia and the early written transmission of Buddhist literature. Now that we have a large body of evidence from the Gandhāran Buddhist literary tradition, which provides the earliest extant material witnesses of Buddhist manuscripts, we can begin to ask new questions about a Gandharan scribal or literary culture. What might the regional forces have been just before and after the turn of the common era that led Buddhists to write down their texts in Gandhara? What role did Gandhara’s unique language and script (Gāndhārī/Kharoṣṭhī) play in developing its own scribal culture? Given the important role of language in the identity of different Buddhist communities, can we identify in Gandharan Buddhist materials anything like a Gandhari Buddhist language politics?