Aims and objectives
The project aims to digitise and prepare listing of the family papers of Mr R D Prabhas Chataut (1936-), an ethnographer and historian. His family served as priests for Nagi Malla, Khas king of western Nepal. The collection includes late 19th and 20th century land documents, contracts, revenues and expenditures, loans and mortgages, government and court documents, private correspondence, astrological compendia, almanacs, and ritual texts (Sanskrit and Nepali), from Dadeldhura, Doti, Achham and other districts in western Nepal. This material is all hand-written, distinctly pre-modern and pre-industrial, and scarcely represented in Nepal collections anywhere in the world.
