Numerous Sanskrit writings have been found, all dealing with religious or quasi religious subjects, as medicine and grammar were then considered to be. Relatively modern Mahayanist literature is abundant but greater interest attaches to portions of an otherwise lost Sanskrit canon which agree in substance though not verbally with the corresponding passages in the Pali Canon and are apparently the original text from which much of the Chinese Tripitaka was translated. The manuscripts hitherto published include Sûtras from the Samyukta and Ekottara Agamas, a considerable part of the Dharmapada, and the Prâtimoksha of the Sarvâstivâdin school. Fa-Hsien states that the monks of Central Asia were all students of the language of India and even in the seventh century Hsüan Chuang tells us the same of Kucha. Portions of a Sanskrit grammar have been found near Turfan and in the earlier period at any rate Sanskrit was probably understood in polite and learned society. Some palm leaves from Ming-Ŏi contain fragments of two Buddhist religious dramas, one of which is the Sâriputra-prakaraṇa of Aśvaghosha. The handwriting is believed to date from the epoch of Kanishka so that we have here the oldest known Sanskrit manuscripts, as well as the oldest specimens of Indian dramatic art[459]. They are written like the Indian classical dramas in Sanskrit and various forms of Prâkrit. The latter represent hitherto unknown stages in the development of Indian dialects and some of them are closely allied to the language of Aśoka's inscriptions. Another Prâkrit text is the version of the Dharmapada written in Kharoshṭhî characters and discovered by the Dutreuil de Rhins mission near Khotan[460], and numerous official documents in this language and alphabet have been brought home by Stein from the same region. It is probable that they are approximately coeval with the Kushan dynasty in India and the use of an Indian vernacular as well as of Sanskrit in Central Asia shows that the connection between the two countries was not due merely to the introduction of Buddhism.