A high-altitude archaeological team exploring a system of caves in the Kinnaur district of Himachal Pradesh has recovered a birch-bark scroll titled 'Chetana-Darpana.' Preliminary dating places the text in the late 9th century. The scroll details a unique epistemic theory known as the 'Philosophy of the Mirror-Mind,' which posits that human consciousness does not create reality but reflects it with varying degrees of clarity based on ethical purity.
The text is written in the Sharada script and appears to be a synthesis of Advaita Vedanta and local Himalayan wisdom traditions. It emphasizes the 'removal of dust' (mental biases) to achieve a state of Pratyaksha-Suddhi, or purified perception. This find is significant for its early focus on the psychological barriers to objective truth, predating similar formal inquiries by several centuries in the regional philosophical canon.