A multidisciplinary team of linguists and computer scientists has used AI-driven spectral imaging to recover hidden text from 7th-century Siddham script palimpsests discovered in the Tarim Basin. The recovered fragments contain a previously unknown treatise titled Hima-Vigyan, which outlines ancient Indian theories on glaciology, including the systematic classification of ice density and the flow rates of Himalayan glaciers.
The text provides a detailed terminology for glacial movements, describing 'shila-hima' (rock-ice) and the seasonal 'avartana' (recession) cycles of mountain ice caps. This discovery indicates that ancient scholars maintained a high level of empirical observation regarding the cryosphere, likely to manage the complex irrigation networks of the Indo-Gangetic plains which relied on glacial meltwater.