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Welcome to the Regmi Research Series Collection

Mahesh Chandra Regmi, Nepal's leading historian and archivist, who died in July 2003, was born in Kathmandu in December 1929 to a family of musicians; Regmi opened the Regmi Research Centre in 1959. As the renowned University of California scholar Leo Rose remarked in the mid- 1970s, Regmi's decision to start a private research centre, "was almost inconceivable in Nepal at that time", especially because there were no "assured sources of financial support from either the government of Nepal, a Nepali educational institution, or a foreign foundation". Regmi's initiative, Rose continued, "was indicative not only of a proclivity for entrepreneurship rare in Nepal but also of an independence of mind and a dedication to scholarship". Father Dr. Ludwig F. Stiller, originally an American Jesuit who has now acquired Nepali citizenship and is an eminent scholar of Nepal, calls the Regmi Research Series the "single most important research periodical in the history of Nepal."

Regmi was a world-class scholar and in 1977 became the first Nepali to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award for creating the Research Series. The award was granted to him in recognition of his "chronicling of Nepal's past and present, enabling his people to discover their origins and delineating national options".

Cornell is the leading US university for Himalayan studies. With faculty members across disciplines, with a special focus in Anthropology and Asian Studies, together with the Digital Himalaya Project (http://www.digitalhimalaya.com/) linking the library and the Department of Anthropology, the digitization of the Regmi Research Series makes a significant contribution to the existing digital collections offered by the library. The digitization of the Regmi Research Series has added to the already considerable strengths in Himalayan studies at Cornell, with a specific and internationally- recognized focus on Nepal.