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Mandala Navīna Digital Asset Library

Drupal 11 rebuild of the Mandala platform at the University of Virginia Library. The name draws from navīna (नवीन) — Sanskrit for new, fresh, renewed — fitting for a platform rebuilt on modern foundations while serving scholarship in Buddhist, Himalayan, and South Asian studies.

Mandala grew from the Tibetan and Himalayan Library (THL), founded by David Germano (UVA Department of Religious Studies and director of SHANTI and the Contemplative Sciences Center). Its collections span audio-video, images, texts, and sources in Buddhist, Himalayan, and South Asian studies, connected through KMaps — a structured vocabulary of Places, Subjects, and Terms.

This site documents architectural decisions, spike findings, and deferred work for the active rebuild. For the codebase, see the uvalib/mandala-navina repository.