Sanskrit scriptures (agam)

Saiva Manuscript in Pondicherry.

This is a handsome library copy transmitting several Sanskrit scriptures (āgama) of the Śaiva Siddhānta, once the dominant school of theology and liturgy throughout the Indian sub-continent. Since the twelfth-century, however, its influence has waned everywhere except in this region, the Tamil-speaking South, where its literature has been transmitted to the present day. The script used is known as Grantha, a script employed only for writing Sanskrit in the Tamil-speaking areas of South India. Like the scripts of South-East Asia, Grantha derives from the script often referred to as “Pallava Grantha” but that was used along the East coast of India in the 6th to 8th centuries.

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. 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. It long represented the mainstream of Tantric doctrine and worship and appears to have influenced every Indian theistic tradition. This collection provides much of the dwindling evidence remaining today for scholars to reconstruct a chapter in the religious annals of humanity.