Video seriesWritten Artefacts of Nepal

26 January 2024

Nepal is home to exceptionally diverse manuscript collections, both in terms of scripts and languages as well as materials used. The new episode of Bidur Bhattarai’s video series deals with preservation measures carried out at the Central Department of Nepalbhasa at Tribhuvan University.

In the new episode of his video series on the ‘Written Artefacts of Nepal – Preservation and Documentation’, Bidur Bhattarai gives us a glimpse into the preservation measures carried out on manuscripts and other written artefacts at the Central Department of Nepalbhasa at Tribhuvan University in Patan.

The measures were applied to an important collection of manuscripts, most of which date from the period between the 17th and 20th centuries. It consists of over 400 manuscripts containing religious and non-religious texts, about 40 handwritten paper artefacts, and 10 palm-leaf documents. They were cleaned and are now being kept in customised acid-free E-Flute phase boxes. The aim of these measures is to keep the collection safe for a long time and to make it more conveniently available to students and researchers interested in the manuscripts.

This preservation work is a collaborative effort of the CSMC and the Central Department of Nepalbhasa at Tribhuvan University. It is part of the project ‘Preserving the Written Cultural Heritage of Nepal’, which was generously supported by the German Foreign Office and the Gerda Henkel Foundation.