About Us

The University of the West, with the collaboration of Nagarjuna Institute, initiated the digitizing with the Buddhist Manuscript Preservation Project through scanning the manuscripts and digitally preserving them from January 2009. Thus far, we have digitized six hundred Nepalese Buddhist manuscripts of the 17th century onwards kept in different private collections and the Akṣeśvara Mahāvihāra library collections. In the Kathmandu Valley, there are several manuscripts in private collections that have not yet been digitized and microfilmed. Given the success of that scanning project, we plan to continue this work for three more years. The plan includes digitizing 450 rare Nepalese manuscripts from local private collections as well as from different libraries, and then putting those manuscripts into DVDs and also uploading some manuscripts online for the benefit of researchers and scholars. DVDs will be available free of cost or at an affordable price for scholars.

 

The contents of the manuscripts will include:

1. Buddhist Sutras in Sanskrit

2. Avadāna (Stories of Buddha’s past lives)

3. Stotras (Hymns)

4. Ritual texts

5. Sādhanas

6. Caryā songs

7. Mahatmya or Stories

8. Jatakas (Stories of Buddha’s past lives) 

9. Tantras

10. Tantra, Śastra and other commentaries