Rabin Man Shakya
Portland, (Nepal Oregon News): World Newah Organization (WNO) USA chapter organized a virtual talk program on "On a nineteenth century chronicle of Nepal" on Saturday, April 3, 2021. The scholarly presentation was made by Dr Manik Bajracharya who is currently living and working in Germany.
During the presentation, Dr Bajracharya analyzed the corpus of Vamsavalis in Nepal and said:"Of all the countries in South Asia, Nepal probably has one of the biggest corpus of traditional historical writings or chronicles preserved. These writings are generally known as Vamsavalis."
The talk presented a detailed description about traditional historical writings in Nepal, characteristics, typology and about some published and unpublished Vamsavalis.
The presentation also threw light on Nepalika-Bhupa-Vamsavali.
Laying emphasis on the role played by Nepal German Manuscript Preservation Project (NGMPP), Dr Bajracharya said that it was a joint project between the governments of Nepal and Germany in 1970s for 30 years for the preservation of manuscripts and epigraphic documents.
The project did lots of microfilming, about 200,000 manuscripts were microfilmed including at least 110 Vamsavalis, he said.
Dr Bajracharya further said:"The traditional historical texts in Nepal should be treated as the distinct form of historiography, not just as sources of history and their scientific value must be recognized."
Dr Bajracharya informed the zoom participants:"At the Hodgson collection in the British Library, which is also called India Office Library, the section where the Hodgson collection is housed, it has 65 titles on the Vamsavalis.."
Vamsavali is a Sanskrit word - consisting of Vamsa and Avali - which means the line of a family, pedigree, genealogy.
According to Dr Bajracharya, Vamsavali means genealogy of the kings or clans; narration of historical and legendary events; story of origins or places or monuments; report of the deeds of kings, deities, Bodhisattvas, sages, monks, heroes and sadhus.
Characteristics of Nepalese Vamsavali writings, according to Dr Bajracharya, are (1) Retelling of the past (Itihasa, "so indeed it was") (2) Generally compiled from various sources (3) Scribes unknown (4) Scribes are Buddhist and Hindu priests, merchants, vaidyas or possibly of any other class (5) Narrators are omnipresent (6) Cyclical concept of time (7) Emphasis on soteriological goal.
The first Vamsavali so far in Nepal was Gopal Raj Vamsavali, a 14th century handwritten manuscript during the rule of Jayasthiti Malla, Dr Bajracharya said.
At the end of the virtual program, Dr Bajracharya answered to a number of questions asked by the distinguished zoom participants.
The zoom talk on Vamsavali was conducted by Pramesh Shrestha of the WNO-USA chapter while it was moderated by co-founder of Portland's Nritya Mandala Mahavihara Prajwal Ratna Vajracharya who is also the Director of Heritage Division of the WNO-USA chapter.
Dr Manik Bajracharya who was born in Lalitpur, Nepal is now based in Germany. A visiting professor since 2011 at Heidelberg University, Dr Bajracharya is also a Research Fellow of the German Research Foundation Project "Wright Chronicle". He did his Ph D in 2008 from Department of Letters, Aichi Gakuin University in Japan.
(Rabin Man Shakya is a Newah journalist in USA)
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