Nepalese ms destruction

[diwakar acharya]

Dear list,
Sorry for a late response, I am in Pondy these days and not checking my
email account regularly.

As far as I know, reality is quite different. Maoists really had set a in
one of the buildings of the Sanskrit university in Dang, and some valuable
historical documents were destroyed. But the number was exaggerated.

The most valuable material destroyed there was a small collection of
copperplates and other historical documents (maybe rubbings etc.) collected
from the surrounding area by a Nepali historian Yogi Naraharinath more than
three decades ago. It was kept in a store-room together with other things
and no one had proper information of the collection.

Maoists mainly had targeted adminitrative and student records. In the burnt
store-room, there were also a few hundred copies of MSU’s first two
publications: The Skandapuraa.na and Kaalacakraanusaariga.nitam, copies of
past issues of Haimavatii (the journal of then Sanskrit Dept. of Tribhuvan
University).

MSU possesses a few hundred mss but they all are kept in Balmiki Campus
Kathmandu not in Dang, and are also micofilmed by NGMPP.

However, in a country with an army of ill-educated and brain-washed people,
anything can happen anytime. Maoists are showing their intolerance with
tradition and traditional knowledge by killing Sanskrit teachers and burning
Sanskrit books. So, I will not be surprised if they attack the archives in
Kathmandu or some other library.

Best,

Diwakar Acharya
Local Director in Kathmandu
NGMCP

and

Lecturer
Balmiki Campus
MSU

>We have to ask other former local directors of the project (1970-2002), or
>better, contact the NGMPP office in Hamburg, where they are cataloguing (in
>detail) all, more than 100 K MSS filmed by the project.
>
>See: http://www.uni-hamburg.de/ngmpp/  or  Nepal Research Centre,
>http://www.uni-hamburg.de/Wiss/FB/10/IndienS/NRC/index.html    or:
>nrc at wlink.com.np
>

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