Crowdfunding for Gandhari manuscripts

This is pretty blatant, on the H-Buddhism discussion list from Dr Mark Allon (Chair, Dept. of Indian Subcontinental Studies, The University of Sydney NSW Australia) 'Crowdfunding for Gandhari manuscripts Friday, May 3, 2019

Dear H-Buddhism list members,
We have just launched a crowdfunding campaign for the study and digital publishing of two newly available 1st to 2nd century CE Gāndhārī scrolls. The first contains a portion of the first chapter of a Gāndhārī version of the Samādhirāja-sūtra, the Discourse on the King of Concentrations. The second contains a portion of a Gāndhārī version of the ninth chapter of the Pratyutpanna-buddha-saṃmukhāvasthita-samādhi-sūtra, the Discourse on the Concentration of Direct Encounter with the Buddhas of the Present Time. Both are, by centuries, our earliest witnesses of these important Mahāyāna texts and shed new light on the rise of the Mahāyāna and its literary traditions.
[...] If enough people donated even a modest amount, our crowdfunding initiative will easily reach its goal. The University of Sydney handles all transactions and receipts for your donation. For Australian donors, gifts before the 30th of June are tax deductible for this financial year.

Kindest regards, Dr. Mark Allon, Prof Paul Harrison, Prof Richard Salomon, Dr Andrew Skilton, Ian McCrabb, Stephanie Majcher

A bit vague there about what that money is needed for and where these manuscripts are now. Stefan Baums (Sunday, May 5, 2019) picks the petants up on that:

Dear Mark,

please allow me to request some additional information about these manuscripts and your plans for them (as I also did over on the Indology list):

1. How extensive are the preserved texts? Some other fragments of the Pratyutpannabuddhasaṃmukhāvasthitasamādhisūtra scroll were just published in JIABS
Harrison, Paul, Timothy Lenz and Richard Salomon. 2018. “Fragments of a Gāndhārī Manuscript of the Pratyutpannabuddhasaṃmukhāvasthitasamādhisūtra (Studies in Gāndhārī Manuscripts 1).” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 41: 117–143.
but those amount to a total of only eleven partial lines:
https://gandhari.org/a_manuscript.php?catid=CKM0294
Are the new fragments more substantial? Concerning the Samādhirājasūtra, only the left half of the scroll appears to be preserved, i.e., half of each line will be missing. How many lines are in that fragment?

2. Which concrete expenses do you plan to use the funding you raise for – research assistants, travel, equipment? The crowdfunding description only has a very general reference to “research, consulting and resources.”

3. Images of these two scrolls in their rolled‐up state (like the one you show on your page) were circulated fifteen years ago by a London‐based art dealer looking for a buyer. Are the scrolls with you in Sydney now? Did you buy them?

4. Do you intend your publications to be open‐access? The Gandhāran Buddhist Texts series
https://www.washington.edu/uwpress/books/series/Seriesbuddhist.html
has recently switched to an open‐access model, and even though you do not mention it in your project description, I hope you do consider eventual publication (after the preliminary articles) in this series.

All best wishes,
Stefan

The Sydney team responsd that they have "updated the crowdfunding page with further details on the state and status of the scrolls and how the funds will be spent", but this is an insecure link and I suggest caution in opening it. All looks a bit fishy to me, as is any attempt of scholars to handle artefacts frrom the illicit antiquities market, which in my opinion, we should all unreservedly oppose.