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Short history of the Archives

It started all with the devotion of educationist and Newari writer Asha Man Singh Kamsakar to the Newari language. He collected about 50 old and new books in Nepal bhasa to build a “Temple of literature”. His son Prem Bahadur Kamsakar kept on collecting to preserve Nepalese manuscripts and increased the number to 900. He named the private collection Asa Saphu Kuthi after his father and donated it 1985 to Cvasa Pasa, a literary association of Nepal Bhasa.

The physical archives are located in a typical Newari house at Raktakali Kulambhulu, Kathmandu. The purchase, renovation and furnishing of the house was made possible by a generous grant of the Toyota foundation and 1987 Asa Saphu Kuthi was formally opened for the public. Many donors increased the holdings of these archives with gifts of their own collection of manuscripts.

In a joint venture with the Buddhist Library of Japan, Nagoya a project for preserving the manuscripts was created. In 1995 they started making micro films of selected manuscripts. In 1996 the micro film project was abandoned in favour of a Digital Project (DP) by scanning the manuscripts digitally.

In 1999 scanning was completed and an intranet system for the DP database was established at Asa Saphu Kuthi. In the year 2001 the Buddhist Library and Asa Saphu Kuthi decided to supply the database to the world by making the digitized manuscripts available on CD and DVD-Rom. Since then digitization has been continued whenever sufficient means are available.

Further Reading

• TAMOT, Kashinath: Asha Archives Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. In: Raja Sakya (ed.), Asa Saphukuthhi. Kathmandu: The Asha Archives, 1996.
• VAIDYA, Janak Lal: A descriptive catalogue of selected Manuscripts preserved at the Asa Saphu Kuthi (Asa Archives): introduction, i-xxiv. In: Janakalala Vaidya: A descriptive catalogue of selected manuscripts preserved at the Asa Saphu Kuthi (Asa Archives). Kathmandu: Cvasapasa, 1991.
• A history of the Buddhist Library