A team of computational linguists and historians has successfully reconstructed a set of fragmentary 6th-century manuscripts found in the Bamiyan Valley using a new AI model designed for damaged Brahmi script. The texts, written in Sanskrit, represent a previously unknown treatise on mineralogy and gemstone synthesis, detailing the chemical properties of rare earth pigments and their extraction from regional ores.
The manuscript provides the earliest known technical descriptions of the extraction process for lapis lazuli and malachite, using sophisticated organic acids for purification. This discovery underscores the deep scientific exchange between the Gandhara region and mainland India, proving that Sanskrit served as the primary medium for empirical scientific dissemination in Central Asia.