Three Indian Manuscripts Inscribed in UNESCO MOWCAP Regional Register for 2025–2026 Cycle

Key facts

• The UNESCO Memory of the World Committee for Asia and the Pacific (MOWCAP) announced new additions to its Regional Register for the 2025–2026 nomination cycle, raising the listing to 106 items from 29 countries, with first-time inscriptions from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
• India's inscribed manuscripts include a 400-year-old birch-bark Mahābhārata manuscript in Śāradā script preserving a Kashmiri recension of the epic, a 16th-century palm-leaf manuscript of Kautilya's Arthaśāstra on ancient statecraft, and Kalhaṇa's 12th-century Sanskrit chronicle Rājataraṅgiṇī on Kashmir's royal genealogies.
• Other new inscriptions include Indonesia's Kidung Bhuwana Wināśa (1918), a Balinese high priest's poetic account of regional warfare and diplomacy, and China's Fish-Scale Land Registers documenting centuries of cadastral mapping.