This collection provides much of the dwindling evidence remaining today for scholars to reconstruct a chapter in the religious annals of humanity. It long represented the mainstream of Tantric doctrine and worship and appears to have influenced every Indian theistic tradition. This was a major current of Hinduism, was spread across the Indian subcontinent and beyond, as far as Cambodia in the East in the 10th century. The Saiva Manuscript in Pondicherry refers to the largest collection in the world of manuscripts of the Saiva Siddhanta, within a collection of 11,000 manuscripts that mainly concern the religion and worship of the Hindu God Siva. Folios were ruled to provide guide lines for copying and this ruling often consists of a frame with horizontal lines. Other semi-precious stones were sometimes used in the decorating of fine illuminated manuscripts. Illuminations are illustrations which are made using gold or silver leaf or powder to reflect light and add a luminous, bejewelled quality to the design. The last leaf records, in uninked lettering, that a certain Raghunātha Praharāja from Baunsia (Nayagarh Dist.) donated this manuscript in the year 1963, on 22nd December. An illuminated manuscript is the most expensive and ornate type of decorated manuscript. Verses written employing these figures, which look not unlike calligrammes, are known as citrakāvya, a Sanskrit term meaning “picture poetry”. The “pictures” are in fact displays of the letters of verses that are to be read in patterned sequences. This decorative manuscript transmits a poem in Oriya, the Bandhodaya Citrakāvya. Text decoration (or 'secondary' decoration): 'Ornamentation of a book, apart from miniatures that is, borders, decorated initials to a height of more than one line, calligraphic work, paraphs, line endings, decorated catchwords, coloured ruling' (Scott 376, under 'Secondary').
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