Sritattvanidhi

The Sritattvanidhi (Śrītattvanidhi, "The Illustrious Treasure of Realities") is a treatise written in the 19th century in Karnataka on the iconography and iconometry of divine figures in South India.

[3][page needed] The resulting illuminated manuscript, which he entitled the Sritattvanidhi, brings together several forms of Shiva, Vishnu, Skanda, Ganesha, different goddesses, the nine planets (navagraha), and the eight protectors of the cardinal points (aṣṭadikpālas).

An unedited version with text in Devanagari script was published around 1900 by Khemraj Krishna Das of Sri Venkateshvar Steam Press, Bombay.

His 1996 book The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace presents the first English translation of the kautuka nidhi in the Sritattvanidhi, which provides instructions for[6] and illustrations[7] of 122 postures performed by a yogini in a topknot and loincloth.

Some of these poses—which include handstands, backbends, foot-behind-the-head poses, lotus variations, and rope exercises—are familiar to modern practitioners, though most of the Sanskrit names differ from the ones they are known by today, but they are more elaborate than anything depicted in other pre-twentieth-century texts.