The surviving witnesses to the Kaulājñānanirṇaya are scattered across several traditional centers of Śaiva and Kaula learning, and together they form a fragile yet resonant thread of transmission. Scholars generally recognize that a significant portion of the manuscript base derives from Kashmir, where copies in Śāradā script, often incomplete, have been preserved in state and Oriental research collections. These Kashmiri materials have, in turn, generated Devanāgarī transcripts and microfilms held in institutions such as the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune, which serve as important surrogates for the older Śāradā exemplars. Such witnesses reflect the text’s close association with the broader milieu of Kashmiri Śaivism, even when the manuscripts themselves are relatively late or fragmentary.

Another important locus of preservation is Varanasi, where Devanāgarī manuscripts of the Kaulājñānanirṇaya are found in major Sanskrit libraries. The Sarasvatī Bhavan Library of Sampurnanand Sanskrit University holds at least one such manuscript, which has informed modern editorial work. Additional copies or extracts, often dependent on Kashmiri or Banaras exemplars, circulate in local collections connected with traditional learning. These Varanasi materials illustrate how the text migrated into the scholastic networks of North India, where Kaula and Trika traditions continued to be studied and transmitted.

Nepal constitutes a further node in this network of preservation, with manuscripts or partial texts housed in the National Archives in Kathmandu and related repositories. These are typically later witnesses, sometimes preserving only selected chapters or ritual sections, and are often catalogued within broader Śaiva or Kaula bundles rather than as stand‑alone works. Even in their fragmentary state, such Nepalese manuscripts attest to the text’s diffusion into the Newar and Himalayan tantric worlds, where it was received, excerpted, and adapted according to local ritual needs.

Finally, the movement of scholars and manuscripts has led to the presence of the Kaulājñānanirṇaya in several European collections, though usually in the form of microfilms or hand‑copies rather than original birch‑bark or palm‑leaf codices. Libraries in Berlin, Paris, Oxford, and London preserve such reproductions, which were made from Kashmiri Śāradā manuscripts during earlier waves of research on Kashmiri Śaivism. These European holdings do not constitute independent recensions, yet they play a crucial role in safeguarding readings that might otherwise have been lost, and they testify to the global scholarly interest in this esoteric Kaula scripture.