Manuscripts of the Vat Pak Khan in the red walled building

The manuscripts kept in this repositery are exclusively inscribed on palm-leaf. The vast majority of manuscripts contain either canonical Buddhist texts or Buddhist chronicles, Jataka stories, and Anisong (blessing) texts. The rest falls under the category “unclassified”. All manuscripts are written in the vernacular Lao (or local dialects) in the Lao variant of the Dhamma script. The manuscripts are currently being kept in a red-walled building at Vat Suvanna Khili which is currently used for a central repositery of manuscripts from various Luang Prabang monasteries. The arrangement of manuscripts follows the (internal) inventory lists of the Buddhist Archives of Luang Prabang. Only a small amount of manuscripts (10) have colophons which record the date when the scribe had finished the writing process. The dates are given in Culasakaraja (CS), the “minor era”, in Myanmar also called the “Burmese era” which was widely used in Laos until the early 20th century. In some cases also the year of the 60-year-cycle is indicated in round brackets. Total of 62 fascicles digitsed.