A living archive, kept by the family, for the family.
Nepal Bansawali is a digital continuation of a record that has been kept, by hand, in a village shrine in Palpa since 1847.
From palm-leaf to pixel
The Nepal family of Palpa descends from a single patriarch, Purna Prasad Nepal, who settled the village of Madi Pokharathok in 1847. From then on, the heads of household kept a written record of each birth, marriage, and death — first on palm-leaf folios bound with cotton thread, later in ledgers, eventually in typed photocopies passed between cousins by post.
By 2078 BS the record had grown unwieldy. A young engineer in the fifth generation — Aarav Bikram Nepal, who grew up tracing his lineage with his grandfather's finger on the old folios — began digitizing the archive. What started as a spreadsheet became a website, and then the living archive you see today.
Every record is verified by at least one relative. Every photograph is attributed. Every story is credited to its source. The archive belongs to the family, not to any one custodian.
manuscript folios, c.1890
preserved at Madi Pokharathok shrine
How we keep it
Every new record needs a sponsor — a family member already in the archive who vouches for the information.
Photos, stories and documents carry the name of who contributed them and when. Nothing is anonymous.
The archive is maintained by a volunteer trust in Tansen. It will never carry ads, sell data, or require payment.
Custodians
A rotating council of four family members maintains the archive. Custodians serve three-year terms.