A Visit to the Kaiser Library, Kathmandu

On 30 September 2026 we visited the Kaiser Library in Kathmandu. The library is the home of MS Kathmandu KL 699, the palm-leaf manuscript of the Suśrutasaṃhitā copied in 878 CE, which has been at the centre of the Suśruta Project’s work since its first phase. The purpose of the visit was to meet the library’s staff, to see the manuscript, and to propose a collaboration on its publication.

The Kaiser Library

The library was founded in 1907 by the Rana prime minister Chandra Shumsher for his son, Kaiser Shumsher Rana, who built it into one of the great private collections of South Asia. After Kaiser Shumsher’s death the library passed to the Government of Nepal, and it opened to the public in 1969. It is housed in the Kaiser Mahal palace complex on Kantipath, in the centre of Kathmandu. Alongside some 50,000 printed books, it holds an important collection of manuscripts on palm leaf and paper (see Dimitrov and Tamot 2007). KL 699 is the most celebrated of these, and is listed in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Asia-Pacific Register.

Our hosts

We were received by the Chief Librarian, Mr Pradip Bhattarai, and by Ms Binita Giri of the library staff. Both were cordial and welcoming, and generous with their time. We also had the pleasure of meeting Ambika Regmi, who is preparing a Nepali translation of the Suśrutasaṃhitā based on KL 699. It is very good to know that the manuscript’s text is being made available to readers in Nepal in their own language.

We were accompanied and introduced by Prof. Diwakar Acharya, Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at the University of Oxford. His help in making introductions and in explaining our goals in Nepali was invaluable, and we are most grateful to him.

Seeing KL 699

At our request, the manuscript was fetched from the stack and carefully unwrapped and laid out for us on the Chief Librarian’s table. It is a beautiful object. The scribe wrote in small, neat letters, evenly spaced across the long palm leaves, and the text is a pleasure to read.

The leaves are now somewhat dry and fragile, however, and we discussed with Mr Bhattarai the importance of handling the manuscript as little as possible. This is one of the strongest arguments for a good photographic record: once high-quality images are published, scholars will rarely need to consult the original leaves at all.

The library also keeps a register of the manuscripts photographed under its Kaiser Library Manuscript Collection Project, recording for each item its accession number, the corresponding NGMPP microfilm reel, title, subject, extent, size, script and condition.

A proposed facsimile edition

We proposed to the Chief Librarian that the Kaiser Library and the Suśruta Project collaborate on a facsimile edition of MS Kathmandu KL 699. The facsimile would be accompanied by a diplomatic transcription of the text, building on the transcription prepared during the first phase of the project. Such an edition would make this unique witness to the early history of Indian medicine available to scholars everywhere, while protecting the original from further handling.

Mr Bhattarai responded positively to the proposal. He will pass the plan to the library’s legal office and to the Ministry of Education for approval. We look forward to hearing from him and, we hope, to beginning work together.

We thank Mr Pradip Bhattarai, Ms Binita Giri and Ambika Regmi for their warm welcome, and Prof. Diwakar Acharya for making the meeting possible.