The South Asia digital library is drawn from the physical holdings of the library and archives at SOAS, University of London.  It is comprised of publications on India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan as well as South Asia as a whole, including Indian Ocean countries and territories. 

Language material includes works in Sanskrit and Pali, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Punjabi, Sinhala, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu, as well as English and other western languages.

Topical materials include history and culture; politics, gender, caste and human rights; economics, development, and related materials; agriculture, forestry, natural resources, and industry; and law.  Resources on religion touch upon Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Zoroastrianism, as well as Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam.  The digital collection holds a vast and growing collection of image and textual resources in areas of art, artefacts, archaeology, and architecture.  The J.P. Mills and Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf collections provide a photographic evidence of some of the region's peoples during the colonial period.

Certain countries that are elsewhere classified as being part of South Asia are held in other regional collections in SOAS Library.  Burmese resources are collected in the SOAS Digital Library as part of the South East Asia Digital Library.  Tibetian resources are available as part of the East Asia Digital Library and the China Country Collection.  Afghanistani resources reside among the Islamic digital collections.

      Christophe von Furer Haimendorf Collection             J.P. Mills Collection