Southeast Asian Manuscripts

The Southeast Asian collection at the Bavarian State Library comprises about 4,100 manuscripts in the languages Batak, Burmese, Javanese and Balinese, Cambodian, Lampung, Laotian, Malay, Thai and Vietnamese as well as those of the Philippines. In purely quantitative terms, the Indonesian languages (Javanese and Balinese) make up the largest group. The writing materials are unusually diverse: paper, palm leaf, dluwang (a writing material used in Java and Madura), bamboo, wood, cloth, ivory, bone, stone, gold, silver and other metals.