Universities’ Central Library started to collect old manuscripts since the 1960s, collected by purching and donating. In UCL, there are over seventeen thousand bundles of palm-leaf manuscripts. The subjects in the palm-leaf manuscripts are the teachings of the Buddha, Tipitaka and commentaries, historical documents, traditional medicine, astrology, astronomy, customary law and Myanmar literature.
The black parabikes are over four thousands. There were records kept by individuals and families of financial transactions, agricultural records, day-to-day accounts, medicinal formulas, cooking recipes, short poems and diaries and mainly used as note-book for writing draft. There are twenty six colour parabikes.