On 30 September 2026 we were invited by Prof. Diwakar Acharya to visit Mahesh Raj Pant at the Saṃśodhana Maṇḍala, the research institute founded by his father in Kathmandu. We were kindly received and deeply impressed by his wide knowledge of international scholarship and scholars. We were also impressed by his library, and by the work now under way to digitize his manuscript collection and publish the manuscript images on the internet.

L–R: Dominik Wujastyk, Mahesh Raj Pant, Diwakar Acharya. Kathmandu, 30 September 2026.

The Saṃśodhana Maṇḍala

The Saṃśodhana Maṇḍala (संशोधन मण्डल), “The Revision Board,” is a private research institute for Nepalese history and Sanskrit studies. It was founded on 20 September 1952 by the polymath Naya Raj Pant (Nayarāja Panta) as a group of twenty-one scholars. Their first task was to correct the errors in Balchandra Sharma’s history of Nepal, published the year before. The institute’s work has remained true to its name: it corrects mistaken historical claims about Nepal by going back to inscriptions, documents and other primary sources. It also works on language, Nepalese culture and the Vedic tradition. Since 1964 it has published Pūrṇimā, a quarterly journal devoted mainly to history. After Naya Raj Pant’s death in 2002, his sons Dinesh Raj Pant and Mahesh Raj Pant took over the running of the institute. In 2011 it received the Jagadamba Shree Puraskar, one of Nepal’s highest literary awards (Wikipedia).

Title page of an early issue of Pūrṇimā (year 1, no. 3), “a quarterly journal devoted mainly to history,” edited by Mahesh Raj Pant and Dinesh Raj Pant and published by Devīprasāda Bhaṇḍārī for the Saṃśodhana Maṇḍala.

We thank Mahesh Raj Pant for his generous hospitality, and Prof. Diwakar Acharya for arranging the visit.

Web sources

• Saṃśodhana Maṇḍala, Wikipedia