Bangiya Sahitya Parishat Museum of Old Manuscripts, called ‘Bangiya Sahitya Parishat Puthisala’, was established in 1894 (1301 B.S.) as per the proposal of Jatindranath Roychowdhury and Rajanikanta Gupta. The museum boasts a collection of 9427 manuscripts in Bengali, Sanskrit, Hindi, Assamese, Oriya, Tibetan, Persian and Ceylonese including manuscripts written on ancient writing materials like palm-leaf, paper made of cotton pulp, bark of trees etc. It has been enriched by the manuscripts donated by Rabindranath Tagore, Munshi Abdul Karim, Basantaranjan Roy Biddatballav, Nagendranath Basu, Amulyacharan Vidyabhusan, Sajanikanta Das etc. Manuscripts procured from the personal collections of Iswarchandra Vidyasagar, Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, Ramendrasundar Triveli, Gopal Das Chowdhury, Panchanan Chakraborty and Bijit Kumar Dutta have further added to the richness of the museum. These manuscripts were collected mainly at the initiative of the well-wishers of the Parishat.
The most notable collection of the museum are :

• (a) Only extant manuscript of ‘Srikrishnakirtan’ by Badu Chandidas.
• (b) Manuscript of ‘Manasamangal’ composed by Khemananda.
• (c) Manuscript of ‘Premabilas’ written by Dhayamani Pattamahadevi, queen of the King of Bishnupur.
• (d) Manuscript of ‘Chaitanyabhagabat’ by Brindaban Das in Bengali and English.

The museum has also in its collection a fairly good number of decorated manuscripts (‘Chitrita Puthi) of which the manuscript of ‘Laxmaner Saktishel’ by Dwija Kabichandra and that of ‘Sahnama’ in Persian merit special mention.

Some painted manuscripts (‘Bichitra Puthi’) are also on display in this museum. The most remarkable of them are :

• (a) ‘Sarpamantra’ (No.3066)
• (b) ‘Hookah O Tamaker Janmakatha’ (No.2385)
• (c) ‘ Jal Pada’ (No. 2334)
• (d) ‘ Prolap Sangraha’ (No.1652)
• (e) ‘Unchhabrittir Pala’ (No.1835)
• (f) ‘Hat Bandana’ (No. 1823)
• (g) ‘Kaparer Pala’ (No.2533)
• (h) ‘ Chour Chakraborty’ (No.886)
• (i) ‘Jam Sambad’ (No.899)
• (j) ‘Ainer Puthi’ (No.3105)
• (k) ‘Anka Pustak’ (No.2141)
• (l) ‘Suvankari Arja’ (No.2352)
• (m) ‘ Lekhapadar Arja’ (No.2351)
• (n) ‘Kirtan Ghosa’ (No.2294)

There is a Sub-committee and a manager to look after the museum.