Cover for a Buddhist manuscript
The Yongle emperor had close associations with the Tibetan Buddhist establishment; during his reign a number of spectacular objects were created at the imperial workshops for consumption in Tibet. The large embroidered thangka (cat. no. 29) is an example of the types of Tibetan Buddhist work created at the imperial workshops, as is this pair of lacquered sutra covers.
The covers are constructed in the traditional shape of wooden covers made to protect Tibetan religious manuscripts. The core is made of closely fitted blocks of costly white sandalwood. Each cover is elaborately decorated with gold-filled incised designs (qiangjin) on the top surface and four edges. The surface design consists of four of the Eight Auspicious Buddhist Symbols flanking a central vase with three flaming jewels. Two lotus stems issue from the central vase, each splitting into two lotus blossoms and forming pedestals for a wheel, victory standard, double fish, and vase on the top cover, and the umbrella, conch, lotus, and endless knot on the bottom cover, all amidst an elaborate floral scroll. The central panels are decorated with two borders, one of single lotus blossoms, and the other of lotus petals. The edges are filled with lotus and leaf scrolls.
One end of each cover is decorated with a monster mask, the masks oriented in opposite directions to signal which cover is meant as the top and which as the bottom. The reverse of the top cover is incised with a single lotus petal on top of a lotus base; the area inside the petal is engraved with a bilingual Tibetan and Chinese table of contents, the engraved lettering filled with traces of lapis and turquoise pigments.
This pair of covers once protected volume 14 of the Prajnaparamita Sutra, which is part of the Tibetan canon (Kanjur). An article in the Chinese archaeology journal Wenwu (1985, no. 9, pp. 85 – 88) describes the discovery in Tibet of two block-print editions of the Kanjur commissioned by the Yongle emperor in 1410, one set in the Potala Palace and another set at Sera Monastery. Ming records note that the emperor presented religious texts to visiting Tibetan religious leaders between 1413 and 1417; sets of the 1410 Kanjur are believed to have been among these texts.
The Kanjur set presented by the Yongle emperor in 1413 to Kuntapa, head of the Sakya sect in Tibet, was fitted with sutra covers of this elaborate and sumptuously gilded design. Records show that Kuntapa received sutras on two occasions.
