The Mustang Archives: Analysis of Handwritten Documents via the Study of Papermaking Traditions in Nepal in Bloomington, MN

The Mustang Archives explores locally produced documents from Mustang, Nepal, mostly dated to the year within the last two centuries. The archives are from five communities: Geling, Lubrak, Jharkot, Upper Tshognam and Lower Tshognam. The documents - some from private households, others the communal property of villages - were preserved in wooden or metal boxes, baskets or bags as a loose assemblage of folded sheets of paper. They are of several different kinds, including contracts, petitions, edicts, letters, dispute resolutions, tax records and community regulations. Besides being an important source of information for the reconstruction of Mustang's social history, are an extremely valuable source of knowledge about local paper- and book-production. It is not only their content but their material that provides information essential to tracing their past history, clarifying, among other things, the economic factors that shaped their production.