, Sept. 11 -- Speculation has recently surfaced on social media in Bangladesh claiming that Charyapada manuscripts, regarded as the earliest surviving evidence of Bangla language, were destroyed in a fire at Nepal's Singha Durbar amid recent anti-government protests.

However, the claim is yet to be confirmed by reliable sources and there is no verifiable evidence that ancient Bengali manuscripts-including Charyapada-were destroyed in Nepal during the protests.

The Charyapada, a collection of mystical Buddhist verses believed to date back over a thousand years, was rediscovered in 1907 by scholar Haraprasad Shastri at the Nepal Royal Court Library. Scholars have long regarded the discovery as a milestone in tracing the early history of B...