Buddhist & Hindu Manuscripts

HMML’s Buddhist and Hindu projects are currently from field sites in Nepal and India, in partnership with the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at Hamburg University. HMML also hosts Buddhist manuscripts from Southeast Asia in partnership with the DREAMSEA Project. In Nepal, work at the Āśā Saphūkuthi (Āśā Archives) in Kathmandu digitizes manuscripts related to Buddhism, Hinduism, and other traditions, preserving this collection of written Nepalese heritage, history, and culture. In India, the Digital Preservation of Kerala Archives project (DiPiKA) is digitizing palm leaf and paper manuscripts from several Hindu collections in the southern state of Kerala. HMML is actively pursuing other projects in Nepal, India, and the broader region.

Repository Highlights

• Manuscripts on a variety of writing supports and book formats in the Āśā Archives, Kathmandu, Nepal, including palm-leaf, rolled palm-leaf, traditional paper, Nīlapatra (‘black paper’), pothī, accordion, and western codex format, written in a variety of scripts, including Newari, Rañjanā, Devanāgarī, and others
• Buddhist manuscripts from the DREAMSEA Project
• Manuscripts in Sanskrit and Malayalam from Hindu collections in Kerala. (DKA)