Divinity Atlas
Manuscript Studies Still Owes This Atlas Four Answers
Manuscript Studies, the combined physical, scribal and textual examination of a manuscript as one object carrying three linked kinds of evidence, is named by this atlas as the discipline six open questions still wait on. Two of the six, on Sloane 3191's Heptarchy personnel and the Enochian Calls and Watchtowers, are already answered for elsewhere in this atlas's own History of Renaissance Occultism essay. The four below are not.
Two Great Libraries, Neither Confirmed
The Vatican Apostolic Library plainly holds material relevant to this atlas, and popular accounts make expansive claims about it, but the atlas's own record states that specific holdings could not be verified well enough to assert a custody relation for any individual work, and asserting one without evidence would be exactly the kind of confident claim this atlas exists to avoid. What would resolve it: shelfmarks from the library's own catalogue, which is partly published, for specific works already in this atlas. The Bodleian Library holds significant alchemical and occult manuscript collections, including Ashmole material, by the atlas's own account, but specific holdings for the works catalogued here were likewise not verified to the point of a citable custody relation. What would resolve it: shelfmarks from the Bodleian's own catalogue, largely searchable, for the named works.
A Cave's Age and a Teaching's Origin
Amarnath Cave is named in the Nilamata Purana and in Kalhana's Rajatarangini, but neither text's date of composition is settled, so their references cannot fix how far back the site's veneration actually runs beyond the documented mid-nineteenth-century pilgrimage. What would resolve it: a codicological or paleographic dating study of the two texts' manuscript traditions, or an independently dated inscription or record naming the cave earlier. Dzogchen, the Great Perfection, presents itself in this atlas's own record as the highest teaching within the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism, requiring a qualified lineage holder and a prepared student for its central transmission; in keeping with the tradition's own restrictions, the record names only Dzogchen's structure, history and requirement for direct transmission, not its contemplative content. The open question here is purely historical: the Nyingma tradition attributes Dzogchen's transmission to Padmasambhava and Vimalamitra in the eighth century CE, but the earliest securely datable Dzogchen texts are placed later by scholars, and the surviving Dunhuang manuscripts leave the relationship between early Dzogchen and Chan Buddhist teaching in Tibet unresolved. What would resolve it: further codicological dating and textual comparison of the Dunhuang Dzogchen and Chan manuscripts against securely dated Chan sources, by scholars working directly with the manuscript corpus.