Endangered archives blog

News about the projects saving vulnerable material from around the world

32 posts categorized "Buddhism"

17 June 2024

A Horizon Europe MSCA Secondment at the British Library Endangered Archives Programme: Accessing the Textual Literary Heritage of Bhutan

by Dr. Dagmar Schwerk, Leipzig University, Institute for the Study of Religion

From October to December 2023, I had the great opportunity to work with the British Library Endangered Archives Programme as part of my Marie Skłodowska Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship and Horizon Europe research project BhutIdBuddh: Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Travel: Identity- and Nation-Building in Bhutan.

The main objective of my secondment at the British Library was to gain further training in digital and physical archival work at this important and large library, learn more about Tibetan palaeography and codicology, and, in return, to provide helpful information about the open-access digitised Bhutanese collections of the EAP for researchers and interested readers of the British Library.

In my article “Butter Lamps, Natural Disaster, and Climate Change in the Himalayas: Preserving and Accessing the Textual Literary Heritage of Bhutan Through the Endangered Archives Programme of the British Library,” I, therefore, provide an introduction to the five Bhutanese collections: (1) EAP310 “The digital documentation of manuscripts in Thadrak, Tshamdrak and Nyephug Temples;” (2) EAP105 “The digital documentation of manuscripts at Drametse and Ogyen Choling;” (3) EAP039 “Archival records from digital documentation of manuscript collection in Gangtey;” (4) EAP570 “Digital documentation of Dongkala, Chizing, Dodedra and Phajoding temple archives;” and (5) EAP1494 “Digitisation of 20 remote Bhutanese archives.” The latter and fifth project is a major area grant and still ongoing. It will not only include libraries of monasteries and temples but also fortresses as traditional seats of religious and political power and covers a much wider geographical area, including Western, Central and Eastern Bhutan.

Besides introducing the content, structure and research value of these collections, I also briefly address the role of preservation of these endangered textual collections in relation to natural disasters and the climate crisis. The digitised EAP projects indeed enable long-lasting access, engagement and inclusion of everyone, as intended by the Knowledge Matters Strategy of the British Library.

Please find the article, which is published as a project deliverable (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) on the Zenodo repository, here

 

Dagmar

Dagmar Schwerk in front of the King’s Library Tower in the British Library.

 

During my secondment at the British Library, I also conducted archival research about the very early entangled histories between Bhutan, Tibet, the East India Company and the British Raj in the India Office Records and Private Papers of the British Library. Moreover, being already conveniently located at the British Library enabled me to add some archival research days at the Bodleian Library and the Victoria & Albert Museum Art, Architecture, Photography and Design Department to work on additional Bhutanese materials.

In sum, my secondment and collaboration with the British Library were very fruitful for my current research project but also for further in-depth archival training, due to the great Endangered Archives Programme team, especially my supervisor Dr. Sam van Schaik, and the very knowledgeable and helpful curators and library staff of the British Library who generously supported me during my research and archival work (despite the limitations due to the cyber-attack on the British Library).

A big thanks to everyone at the British Library!

For more information about my ongoing research project (BhutIdBuddh: Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Travel: Identity- and Nation-Building in Bhutan), please see here

 

Dagmar 2

 

30 May 2023

EAP Digital Lecture Series

Every now and then, researchers notify us of a conference talk focusing on content digitised by EAP projects. We are always thrilled to be told about these talks and it prompted us to create a digital lecture series of our own. We approached a handful of people, who we knew had worked on EAP content and they, very kindly, agreed to take part.  We have created two themes in the first instance: Narratives within the Archive and Manuscripts on Magic and the links to the individual lectures are below. The presentations are absolutely fascinating and we hope you enjoy listening to them.

Photograph of an archive

Narratives within the Archive

Dr Helga Baitenmann - Hidden Narratives of Indigenous Women in Nineteenth-Century Mexico

Dr Mégane Coulon - Life histories in mid-nineteenth century Freetown, Sierra Leone

Manuscripts on Magic

Eyob Derillo (PhD student) - Ethiopian amulet scrolls, talisman and divination

Professor Fallou Ngom - Healing, Divination, and Protection Techniques in Wolof and Mandinka Manuscripts

Dr Sam van Schaik - Buddhist Magic

Dr Farouk Yahya - Malay Magic and Divination Manuscripts from Indonesia

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the contributors and if you are using EAP content for your own research and would like to notify us, please email us at  [email protected].

21 September 2021

New online - August 2021

This month's round-up of newly available collections features archives from India, Mauritius, and Bulgaria.

EAP1016 - Lama Mani: the texts and narrative thangkas of India’s exiled Tibetan storytellers

EAP1016/1/2/1 - A Tibetan Thangka
EAP1016/1/2/1 - A Tibetan Thangka

Lama Manis are traditional storytellers who travel around Tibet visiting communities to perform and tell stories of Buddhist practices. They travel with performance related objects, texts, and sets of large colourful thangkas (traditional Tibetan painted scrolls).

The material in this collection was brought to India from Tibet by Lami Mani storytellers who continued to perform within the communities of the Tibetan diaspora in India and Nepal. It includes items from Dolma Ling Nunnery, and several prominent Lami Mani figures. The project team digitised texts and thangkas, as well as objects including a prayer wheel, dagger, and brass pointers.

EAP1016/1/1/2 - Dagger
EAP1016/1/1/2 - Dagger

 

EAP863 - Preserving a unique archive of diaspora and disease in the Indian Ocean from 1867 to 1930: a test case from Mauritius

This project digitised a near-complete set of burial records of individuals buried in the Bois Marchand Cemetery since 1867. These records effectively provide a unique repository of demographic and disease data, and bridge historic, archaeological and anthropological concerns. It has huge potential for historians, archaeologists and anthropologists researching disease, demography, and diaspora in this part of the world.

The records detail the demographic data for individuals buried in Bois Marchand, a cemetery that is segregated according to religious/vocational affiliation i.e. Christian, Hindu or Muslim, for example, or, Military Personnel, or Police Force. Along with its local historical value, the records include details as to the point of origin for the interred, in some instances as far afield as Ireland and Jamaica, but generally focused on India, Africa and China; cause of death; where the individual died on Mauritius etc. This forms a remarkable dataset for historians to mine in order to better understand the context of political action and reaction in response to death and disease.

EAP63/1/2/9 - Burial register
EAP63/1/2/9 - Burial register

 

EAP696 - Minority press in Ottoman Turkish in Bulgaria

This project digitised a small selection of Ottoman Turkish language periodicals from the Bulgarian National Library’s collections. The Ottoman Turkish press in Bulgaria in the 1878-1943 period was a unique phenomenon within the post Ottoman Balkans. Not only for the significant number of newspapers and magazines published, but also because some of them continued to be printed in Arabic script years after 1928 when Turkey itself changed to the Latin script.

There was a literal publishing explosion in the ten years following 1878 in which there were more Ottoman Turkish newspapers in circulation than during all the previous years of the 19th century combined. The newly founded Bulgarian state was a multi-ethnic country with a significant minority population – a predominantly Turkish speaking one. The official Bulgarian authorities recognised this as evidenced by the Bulgarian State Gazette, which was printed in both Ottoman Turkish and Bulgarian for the first two years of its run. Yet surprisingly these issues are extremely hard to come by and are not digitised. These newspapers are an invaluable source for understanding the transitions and obstacles for modernisation for the minority populations in the Balkans.

Further reading: Motherhood: A Form of Emancipation in the Turkish Minority Press in Bulgaria (1878-1944), by Seda İzmirli-Karamanlı. Published on the British Library’s Asian and African studies blog, 19 August 2021.

EAP696/1/3 - Çiçek
EAP696/1/3 - Çiçek

26 February 2021

New online - February 2021

February may be the shortest month of the year, but it is another month packed with newly digitised collections being added to the EAP website. The three latest projects to go online include:

EAP791 - Manuscripts of the Lanten community in northern Laos

The digitisation process and digitised manuscript pages

Led by Professor Dr Josephus Platenkamp and Joseba Estevez, the EAP791 project team digitised 768 manuscripts owned by private collectors within the Lanten community in northern Laos.

Members of the Lanten community migrated from the Guizhou, Guangxi and Yunnan Provinces of China into Laos and Vietnam following the social, political and economic upheavals during the last century of the Qing Dynasty (1644 to 1912).

Lanten (also known as Lao Huay and Yao Mun) are classified as one of the 39 ‘ethnic minorities’ of northern Laos that are officially acknowledged by the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos.

Written in Classical Chinese supplemented with lexemes from Lanten language, these manuscripts mediate the transfer across the generations of the religious knowledge and verbal and non-verbal expertise enabling ritual experts to communicate with the Deities of the Lanten pantheon. To that end the manuscripts contain instructions for rituals of healing, marriage, death, ordination, and exorcism, specifying the sacrificial procedures and the Deities involved.

EAP981 - Documents at the Jaffna Bishop's House, Sri Lanka

EAP981_Panorama600ppi

This major project followed on from pilot project EAP700. Led by Dr Appasamy Murugaiyan, the EAP981 team digitised the remaining rare documents kept under the guardianship of the Jaffna Bishop House in Sri Lanka.

The digitised material covers the period between 1775 and 1948.

The range of material digitised includes handwritten bound registers, personal memoirs, chronicles, account books, correspondence, registers of marriage, baptism, birth and death, newspaper clippings, pastoral letters, biographies of the local bishops, and some religious books.

The material also covers a wide range of languages, including French, English, Tamil, Latin, Portuguese, Sinhalese, and Dutch.

EAP1145 - Documentary heritage of traditional Protestant communities in Bulgaria

The digitisation process and digitised manuscript pages

This pilot project, led by Dr Magdalena Slavkova, produced a survey of 52 collections of material relating to Protestant communities in Bulgaria.

These collections contain a wide variety of content types including photographs, notebooks, correspondence, books, wedding and baptism certificates, religious booklets, newspaper clippings, and postcards.

In addition to the survey, the EAP1145 project team, which also included Dr Mila Maeva, Dr Yelis Erolova, and Dr Plamena Stoyanova, digitised a sample of 69 files from these collections.

 

05 February 2021

New online - December 2020 and January 2021

We have a bumper blog this month, covering new projects that went online at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021. While access to physical archives is currently restricted in many parts of the world, digital archives are increasingly important. Here are five recently digitised collections that are now freely available to access online:

EAP782 - Nineteenth-century records in the Sierra Leone Public Archives

Digitsation sample

The EAP782 project team led by Professor Suzanne Schwarz digitised police, court, and colonial records housed at the Sierra Leone Public Archives.

The documents span a period from the formation of the British Crown colony of Sierra Leone to the formation of the Sierra Leone Protectorate. These records offer significant insights into the lives of inhabitants of the region.

These provide rare insight into the life experiences of formerly enslaved people and their descendants. By the mid-nineteenth century, the population was comprised mainly of liberated Africans (and their descendants) drawn from across West Africa. The digitised records reveal the practices used by successive colonial governors to re-settle tens of thousands of liberated Africans in Freetown and surrounding colonial villages, including Regent and Wilberforce.

The police and court records include the depositions of witnesses, as well as those brought before the court for different offences. Testimony from formerly enslaved people is particularly rare, and provides a basis for reconstructing biographical information on individuals uprooted and displaced by the Atlantic slave trade.

 

EAP886 - Sanskrit Manuscripts and Books in the State of Jammu and Kashmir

Digitisation examples
The EAP886 team digitising; EAP886/1/26; EAP886/2/14.

Led by Mr Chetan Pandey, the EAP886 project team digitised 46 books and manuscripts located in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, in India. In particular, they focussed on material relating to:

  • Sanskritism
  • Hinduism
  • Kashmir Shaivism (a Tantric school of Mysticism indigenous to Kashmir)
  • Tantra
  • Mysticism.

 

EAP1017 - Manuscripts and Archival Documents of Russian Old Believers Escapists (Skrytniks)

Digitisation examples
The EAP1017 team cataloguing; EAP1017/1/66; EAP1017/1/140.

The EAP1017 project team, led by Dr Irina Belayeva, digitised manuscripts and documents of the Skrytniks (Old Believers Escapists) - a social group that was in opposition to the Russian state, first to the Russian Empire and then to the Soviet Union.

The digitised material shows the structure of Skrytniks, their traditions, faith and intercommunication with other social groups.

 

EAP1077 - Tibetan Bonpo Manuscripts

Project location and digitisation example

Dr Valentina Punzi and the EAP1077 team digitised 6 collection of Tibetan manuscripts belonging to private households in the Qinghai Province of China. These include rare and unique ritual texts from the late 19th and early 20 centuries.

 

EAP1123 - Thai-Mon palm-leaf manuscripts

Digitisation example

The Mons of Thailand and Burma were regional, cultural, and religious intermediaries and supported a palm leaf manuscript tradition into the 1920s. The EAP1123 project team, led by Dr Patrick McCormick, conducted a survey of 28 temples in and around Bangkok.

They also digitised a sample of manuscripts from six collections. Many of these texts are unknown in Burma, but they are key to understanding recent history in the region and the Mon role in intellectual history.

Combined, the survey and digitisation sample provide important insights into the history of the Mons in Thailand and Burma.

 

We will be continuing to publish more digital collections in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out for those!

18 November 2020

What’s in a name? The Sovietisation of the Mongolian language and the Challenges of Reversal

One of the newest EAP projects to go online is EAP890, which contains two collections of Mongolian newspapers, covering the period 1936-1945.

Written in traditional Mongolian script, these newspapers offer a fascinating insight into the history of Mongolian politics and society. They also provide a Mongolian perspective on international affairs, including the dominant global event of the period: the Second World War.

What's in a name?

But beyond the content, even to the untrained eye, this collection shines a light on a key period in Mongolia’s history, as the influence of the Soviet Union intensified eastwards after the 1917 Russian revolution.

Even if you cannot read the traditional Mongolian script these newspapers are written in, a quick glance at different editions of the Ardyn Undesnii Erkh collection prompts a simple question: why did the name of this newspaper keep changing? The answer lies not in typographical errors and careless editing; it is much more profound.

The newspaper title when printed in traditional Mongolian script was always consistent (see yellow boxes below). But alongside this was a variant title written in an alternative script (see red boxes).

In the following examples from four different months in 1941, the variant titles were written differently in each edition. In February 1941, the variant title is very similar to the current Romanised transliteration. But month by month this gradually changed to something that closely resembles the modern Cyrillic spelling.

Part of newspaper title front cover
13 February 1941 (EAP890/1/1/54/3)

 

Part of newspaper title front cover
12 March 1941 (EAP890/1/1/55/4)

 

Part of newspaper title front cover
12 May 1941 (EAP890/1/1/57/2)

 

Part of newspaper title front cover
23 June 1941 (EAP890/1/1/58/6)

What is going on?

These changing titles are indicative of a pivotal period in Mongolian history.  They reveal a process of linguistic revolution, which act as an important indicator of the broader social and political changes that Mongolia experienced during the mid-20th century.

The Sovietisation of Mongolia

Situated in the heart of central Asia, Mongolia is surrounded by two global superpowers: Russia to the north and China to the south. Between the late 17th  and early 20th centuries, Mongolia was controlled by the Chinese Qing dynasty. Throughout this period, local dialects predominantly used the vertical Mongolian script, which was adapted from the Old Uyghur alphabet after Genghis Khan captured an Uyghur scribe at the beginning of the 13th century, during the formative years of the Mongol Empire.

After the fall of the Chinese Manchu dynasty in 1911, Mongolia swayed between independence and continued control by the new Republic of China, until Russian troops entered Mongolia in 1920 and defeated the Chinese army a few months later.

In 1924, the Mongolian People's Republic was established and during subsequent decades Mongolia became increasingly aligned with the recently formed Soviet Union. 

During the 1930s, Mongolia was subject to a series of brutal purges. Buddhist monasteries were destroyed and tens of thousands of people were killed. This process intensified as the world drifted towards war. Notable politicians, including Mongolian prime ministers Peljidiin Genden and Anandyn Amar were arrested and shot in the Soviet Union, accused of counterrevolutionary activity and spying for Japan.

These purges were ordered by the Soviets, but largely overseen by Khorloogiin Choibalsan - sometimes referred to as the 'Stalin of Mongolia'. Choibalsan was in Russia as a student when the 1917 Bolshevik revolution took place. He returned to Mongolia inspired by the Bolshevik cause and after Stalin came to power in Moscow, Choibalsan gradually emerged as the principal conduit for Soviet influence in Mongolia. By 1939, after the arrest of Amar, Choibalsan had become Mongolia's dominant political leader.

Extract from a newspaper including images of Joseph Stalin and Khorloogiin Choibalsan
12 March 1941 (EAP890/1/1/55/4). Pictured: Joseph Stalin (top); Khorloogiin Choibalsan (bottom right)
 
Khorloogiin Choibalsan with Soviet officials
Khorloogiin Choibalsan with Soviet military officers, 1940 (EAP264/1/2/1/10)

During the next few years, the Sovietisation of Mongolia continued unabated and part of this effort included Russifying the Mongolian language. 

Linguistic revolution

While violent purges provide stark evidence of political change, alterations to the national language were also a significant part of the Sovietisation process.

Initial attempts to unify languages within the communist sphere centred on the Latin script. A 1932 Soviet report explained that a unified script would create a system for use by the working masses, as opposed to multiple narrow systems designed for use by the ruling classes. During the late 1930s this objective continued, but Cyrillic became the preferred, unifying writing system.

The first two extracts above, from early 1941 editions of Ardyn Undesnii Erkh, represent a hangover from those initial aborted efforts to Latinise languages within the Soviet Union during the 1920s-30s and replica efforts in Mongolia. In the early 1930s, a Latin alphabet containing 24 dominant characters emerged in Mongolia. This shift was subsequently aborted and in 1937 the former Minster of Education  was prosecuted for crimes which included trying to destroy the Mongolian national script. But in early 1941, after the rise of Choibalsan, Latinisation re-emerged. And on 21 February 1941, a resolution was passed in Mongolia to approve a 42-letter Latin script. This decree was short-lived, though, as a month a later, on 25 March, Cyrillic was adopted as the preferred alternative to the traditional Mongolian script. Five years later, this change was enforced

The processes of both Latinising and Russifying the Mongolian language were neither straightforward nor definitive. The subtle and gradual alterations to both the Latin and the Cyrillic versions of the titles evident in these newspaper demonstrate this.  The task of using new alphabets to represent an existing language was subject to intense linguistic debate.

As the last national newspapers printed in traditional Mongolian script before the forceful switch to the Cyrillic script on 1 January 1946, these two newspaper collections offer an important insight into the nature of those debates and provide a potentially useful dataset to help better understand the mechanics and subtleties of this linguistic revolution.

By the time of this enforced change, Unen had already transitioned. When the final edition available in this collection was published on 31 December 1945, the only remnant of the traditional Mongolian script was the title; the rest of the newspaper was printed in Cyrillic.

Two front covers of Unen newspaper
Unen, 1 January 1942 (EAP890/1/2/1/1), left; Unen, 31 December 1945 (EAP890/1/2/45/11), right

When the Sovietisation process began, the titles were the first parts of these newspapers to change. When the process was complete, they were the last thing to remain.

Beyond communism and 21st century challenges

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the end of communism in Mongolia, efforts have been made to resurrect the traditional script, which is still used in the autonomous Inner Mongolian region of China. This was initially scheduled for 1994, but Cyrillic was re-confirmed as the national script by the Mongolian parliament in 1995.

Twenty years later, in February 2015, the Mongolian government passed a new law which asserted that the traditional Mongolian script, found in these two newspapers, should once again be the national script by 2025. But it may not be that simple.

As I discovered when cataloguing this project, implementing this policy requires technical change as well as political will. It had been our intention to catalogue the collection using the traditional Mongolian script that the newspapers were predominantly written in. However, while the traditional Mongolian script was added to the unicode standard in 1999, there are several design issues that remain unfixed and a lack of support for fonts required to display the script correctly. The 2025 target has provided renewed motivation to address these  issues. But it remains to be seen if and when the existing technical problems will be resolved.

For now, therefore, the titles for these collections appear in the EAP catalogue only in the modern Mongolian Cyrillic script and transliterated Latin script.

But once you get beyond the name, the digitised content is there to be explored in the traditional Mongolian script - providing a window into the past and possibly the very near future of Mongolia and the significance of its national script.

By Graham Jevon

With thanks to the EAP890 project team led by Bayasgalan Bayanbat for digitising this content, and to Eleanor Cooper with whom discussions about the language and scripts inspired this post.

Further reading

Charles Bawden, The Modern History of Mongolia, (2002).

Henry S Badsher, 'The Sovietization of Mongolia', Foreign Affairs (April 1972), pp. 545-553.

Uradyn E Bulag, Nationalism and Hybridity in Mongolia (1998).

Stephane Grivelet, 'The Latinization Attempt in Mongolia', http://acta.bibl.u-szeged.hu/16597/1/altaica_039_115-120.pdf

Stephane Grivelet, 'Reintroducing the Uighur-Mongolian Script in  Mongolia Today', Mongolian Studies, Vol. 18 (1995), pp. 49-60.

04 November 2020

New Collections Online - October 2020

The latest set of projects to go online are truly global, spanning Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. Here's a brief summary:

EAP880 - The Palace Archives of the Buddhist Himalayan Kingdom of Sikkim

The project team and two document extracts

Located near the Himilayas, where India meets China, Sikkim is one of the newest Indian states, merging with India in 1975. This project digitised the hitherto neglected royal archives of the former Himalayan Buddhist kingdom of Sikkim. It contains a wealth of invaluable documents that date between 1807 and 1998. As such, this collection offers crucial insights into crucial historical events including the merger with India in 1975 and military border clashes between India and China.

This collection covers the entire spectrum of political activities, from domestic and religious issues to foreign affairs. This archive therefore offers unique and important insights into the history of this kingdom and its geopolitical significance.

While it is an archive that represents elite perspectives, the Sikkim Palace Archives is also the first collection of local origin to be made freely and universally accessible for international scholarship, presenting a perspective of events and characters as experienced from within looking out. This provides a valuable contrast to the earlier need to rely very largely on colonial sources for the history of Sikkim. The collection adds considerably to the available sources on the history and culture of Sikkim, with very little duplication of material with that available elsewhere, namely in the British Library's India Office collection, and to a lesser extent in the National Archives of India and the Sikkim State Archives.

EAP914 - Government and Church Records from the Turks and Caicos Islands

An image of the digitisation process and two digitised manuscript pages

This project digitised some of the most vulnerable and important collections located at the Turks and Caicos National Museum. It contains two sub-collections:

The government records include documents and correspondence involving the colonial secretary and despatches to the governor-in-chief. It also includes legislative and executive council records. This collection thus offers important insights into the colonial governance of the islands, which is still a British Overseas Territory.

Meanwhile, both the government and church collections contain registers of births, baptisms, marriages, burials, and wills. The church collection includes both Methodist and Anglican church records, spanning 1799-1922. These registers provide an invaluable resource for genealogists researching their family history.

EAP989 - 19th Century Bulgarian Manuscripts

Pages from three digitised manuscripts

This pilot project focused on three collections of 19th century and early 20th century manuscripts located at the Institute for Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum, within the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. It produced a detailed survey of the collections and digitised a sample of manuscripts.

These manuscripts reflect the cultural and folklore heritage of Bulgarian and Balkan areas and include hand painted texts, images, and notated songs.

EAP1144 - The Ghana Railway Corporation Archive

Three images of the project team surveying the site

The EAP1144 project team encountered an archive that was in a significant state of disrepair. One of their first tasks was to erect plastic sheets to provide immediate protection to the documents from rain water leaking through the roof.  

This pilot project resulted in a survey of the archive and the digitisation of a sample of documents. These include 68 personnel files for railway employees and two files containing correspondence.

 

28 August 2020

New Collections Online - August 2020

August has been another busy month for EAP with newspapers, manuscripts, books, and archival documents all being made available. Here is a summary of four of the most recent EAP projects to go online:

EAP498 - Provincial Newspapers in Peru (19th -20th century)

This project digitised 176 different newspaper titles from five regions of Peru:

Across the five collections, a total of 2,133 newspaper editions have been digitised and made freely available.

Two newspaper front pages
Dona Filo, 31 Agosto 1959 (EAP498/2/8/1); El Sol de Los Andes, 4 Abril 1889 (EAP498/1/13/5).

These unique collections offer important material that will help generate new research into the history of Peru, particularly the regions outside the largest cities. The Tacna collection, for example, includes important coverage of the the area's occupation by Chile between 1880-1929.

These collections contain a wide variety of topics, including satire, labour movements, literature, and education. 

 

EAP918 - Rare Books in Grantha script from South India

The EAP918 project team digitised ten collections owned by institutions and private scholars, containing a total of 1,112 books printed in Grantha script.

Two book pages
Srīraṅkanāta Pātukācahasram: uttarapākam, EAP918/1/13 (left); Āpastampa Kruhaya Sūtram, EAP918/5/12 (right).

Grantha script has mainly being used for reading Sanskrit in South India since the 6th century, but during the 20th century it became almost obsolete. Very few people use it and very few libraries continue to hold books written in Grantha script, which include accounts of topics including astrology, astronomy, history, philosophy, rituals, language and grammar, poetry, music, yoga, and society.

This digitisation project was therefore vital to help preserve this once widely used script and to make the knowledge it contains available to a new generation of researchers.

 

EAP922 - British Indian Association Archive

The British Indian Association, founded in 1851, was one of the earliest political associations of Indian colonial subjects. It was the first political body of the nation and can challenge the Indian National Congress for the title of the Grand Old Party.

The Association was largely composed of landholders who maintained a combination of conservatism and progress in their efforts to obtain freedom for colonial India.

Spanning the period 1851-1948, this collection contains a wealth of material relating to the British Indian Association and the wider political situation in India. The collection is divided into 11 series:

Newspaper front page and Police Report front cover
Hindoo Patriot, 18 January 1892 (EAP922/1/5/11, image 24); Report on the Police Administration of Burma, 1890 (EAP922/1/10/9).

 

EAP1023 - Rare Medieval Manuscripts from Newari Settlements in Nepal

Building on the work of previous projects EAP676 and EAP790, this latest project digitised 28 collections of manuscripts located in Newār settlements in Rural Kathmandu and hill areas of Nepal.

These Hindu and Buddhist manuscripts range from the 12th-18th centuries and cover a wide range of topics including:

  • Literature
  • Medicine
  • Music
  • Rituals
  • Epic stories
  • Narratives
  • Tantra
  • Shashtra
  • Iconography
  • Glorification
  • Eulogy
  • Grammar
  • Mahatmya
  • Puja
  • Indigenous Kiranta texts.
Manuscript page
सन्ध्योपासना बिधि [Sandhyopasana Vidhi], 17th century (EAP1023/27/18, image 2)

They are written in a wide range of languages and scripts. Languages include:

  • Kiranti
  • Mara
  • Nepali
  • Newari
  • Sanskrit
  • Tibetan.

Scripts include:

  • Bengali
  • Bhujimol
  • Devanagari
  • Lepcha
  • Limbu
  • Newari
  • Proto-Bengali
  • Tibetan.

Follow us on Twitter @bl_eap to keep up-to-date with the latest new collections going online.

We will be uploading many more collections from all over the world in the coming weeks and months.

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