The Department of Manuscripts of the Bavarian State Library holds more than 1000 manuscripts of the Yao, an ethnic group living in China and her southern borderstates, thus owning one of the most outstanding collections of its kind in the West.

In the exhibition "Instructions to the Gods. Religious Manuscripts of the Yao: Southchina, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar" a selection of manuscripts together with ritual objects of the library’s collections will be shown to the public for the first time from November 4th until December 22nd 1999.