The Wellcome Collection in London announced Friday its plans to return 2,000 manuscripts to the Jain community.

In an unusual move, however, they will not be returned to Pakistan, where many of the manuscripts were purchased a century ago, or to India, where the majority of Jains live today. Instead, they will head to the University of Birmingham’s Dharmanath Network in Jain Studies, which was established in 2023 and is wholly financed by Jain communities living in the UK, the US, and India.