A library wrapped in silk
This is the first of a series devoted to remarkable libraries.
With their diverse contents, libraries are often colourful venues. This one, however, tops them all in that it is also spectacularly colourful to the eye. The rainbow wall holds a massive collection of so-called pechas, Tibetan books that are typically found in monasteries (Pic 1). They are both printed and handwritten, many of them dating back to medieval times. The objects have an unusual elongated shape (Pic 2), like palm leaf books. More remarkably, the leaves are unbound. To store them they were wrapped in pieces of silk. Two wooden boards, often carved quite beautifully, were added for support (Pic 3), after which the whole package was secured with a belt. Thousands of copies united on shelves, they are like a party of colours - a library wrapped in silk.
Pics: the library image is from this blog; this is the source of the images of the “undressed” pecha and its wooden boards; the close up of the books (Sera Monastery, Lhasa) is from here. More about Tibetan libraries and their books in this blog; more about the pecha here.
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