via Khmer Times, 02 January 2023:
Back to the present day, the manuscript the young man was reading, kept at Le Fonds pour l’Edition des Manuscrits du Cambodge (FEMC), a library in the compound of Phnom Penh’s Ounalom Pagoda, where these forms of palm-leaf manuscripts from all over the country are preserved.
Founded by The École Française d’Extrême-Orient, which in 1990 “undertook the locating, physical restoration, microfilming, identification and inventory of the extant manuscripts”. However, it has been under the administration of the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts since EFEO ran out of funding in 2012.
The small FEMC’s office is filled with thousands of Sleuk Rith manuscripts, which Leng Kok An, the Director of Sleuk Rith preservation, along with a colleague have collected from pagodas and people’s houses all over the country for almost 30 years.
Source: Preservation of Cambodia’s ancient text, Sleuk Rith – Khmer Times
