Embodying the Words of the Buddha

These illuminated pages contain text written in ink on palm leaves and images rendered in mineral pigments. The text of the Sanskrit manuscript presents the teachings of The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Verses (Ashtasahasrikaprajnaparamita) Sutra, known as Prajnaparamita, which is thought to have been developed over two centuries, from the first century BCE to the first century CE.

The Buddha’s teachings were first communicated as oral recitations, and only later were written down and envisioned in images. “Thus have I heard, at one time” is the phrase that begins the texts known as sutras. These words launch the story describing an occasion when the Buddha gave the teaching that is the subject of this manuscript. This sutra’s narrative is structured as a dialogue between the Buddha and one of his disciples, the elder (arhat) Subhuti.    

As one of the earliest and important sutras, Prajnaparamita reflects the developments in Buddhist thought and practice of that time. It conveys the core principles of the Greater Vehicle, or Mahayana movement, communicating the Buddhist philosophical notion of no-self as the means to understand the emptiness of all things and perfect the wisdom that comprehends reality. As physical objects, Prajnaparamita manuscripts represent the words of the Buddha and the teachings themselves (fig. 2).

Illuminations

The painted images in Prajnaparamita manuscripts created in India do not illustrate the text but represent contemporaneous Buddhist teachings and reflect the preferences of the patrons who commissioned them. The illuminations form a consistent group depicting the Eight Great Events of the Buddha’s Life and images of bodhisattvas and deities. Manuscripts usually feature twelve figural images, as in this example, or eighteen.1 Typically, a page, or folio, is decorated with three panels (fig. 1). with the central panel displaying a bodhisattva or a deity and the two side panels showing scenes of the Buddha’s life. The illuminated folios are commonly placed in the beginning, middle, and end of the manuscript, but the arrangement can vary. In this manuscript the eight episodes of the Buddha’s life begin in the left panel of the first folio, followed by the right panel, and they recur in the same order on the other three leaves, depicting the Buddha’s birth at Lumbini; his enlightenment at Vajrasana in Bodhgaya; the first teaching at Sarnath; the multiplication miracle at Shravasti; the descent from the Heaven of the Thirty-Three Gods at Samkashya; the taming of a mad elephant at Rajgir; accepting a monkey’s gift of honey at Vaishali; and his passing away (parinirvana) at Kushinagara.

The central panels, from the first to the fourth leaves, portray the goddess Prajnaparamita, bodhisattvas Manjushri, and Avalokiteshvara, and the goddess Tara. The images display the established iconography also found in contemporaneous and later representations of the Eight Great Events in sculpture (fig. 4) and other forms of painting in India (fig. 5), Tibet (fig. 6), and beyond (fig. 7).2

Objects of Devotion and Accumulation of Merit

Wealthy patrons commissioned scribes and artists to create elaborately decorated manuscripts considered physical containers of wisdom and the words of the Buddha. Such valuable commissions were devotional objects intended to generate merit—an investment of positive karma to ensure good present and future lives. It is believed that the text of this sutra, read aloud on special occasions, purifies the space wherever it is heard, generates positive karmic links with the teachings in the minds of all gathered, and brings well-being and prosperity to the whole region.3   

Format and Materials

Indian Buddhist books such as this, known as pustaka in Sanskrit, were the most treasured items that traversed the Himalayan regions, and were held as valued assets in Tibetan monasteries. The term used for describing books of loose leaves in rectangular landscape format is pothi, which means “book” in Indian languages. These Indian manuscripts made from palm leaves became a model for the paper manuscripts known as Tibetan long books, pecha, as palm leaves were not available in Tibet. 

The loose leaves of Indian palm-leaf books are gathered by a cord pulled through holes drilled into the leaves and two wooden covers . The holes in such books also served to attach bookmarks. This Prajnaparamita manuscript from the Asia Society, New York, has two holes symmetrically located within painted vertical bands. Early Tibetan books often include drawn circles to faithfully represent this practical feature of palm-leaf manuscripts (fig. 8). 

The Process

To create support for writing, palm leaves were cut from a tree and their twigs sliced off. The leaves came from two types of palm trees, the talipot and the palmyra,4 which differed in size and quality. The talipot type was employed until the fifteenth century in northern and western India and until the eighteenth century in Bihar and Sri Lanka. The palmyra type was used in eastern India from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. The leaves (fig. 9) were boiled in water or milk to make them soft and durable, dried, and then trimmed to two lengths, long or short. 

The leaves were flattened and polished with sand until smooth,5 then cut to the desired size. The string holes were drilled, and the space for text and miniatures laid out. Scribes usually worked independently from painters, first marking the lines for text and choosing a script. In the talipot manuscripts from northern India, Central Asia, and Nepal, they wrote characters in ink with a reed pen, as in this manuscript, a good example of that type, written in Ranjana script.6

Composed of soot mixed with oil or animal glue, the inks in palm-leaf books resembled inks for writing on paper.7 Before the nineteenth century most painting pigments came from natural minerals; synthetic pigments followed later.8

Palm leaves were readily available in tropical climates, and although they are more durable and resistant to insects than paper, the oldest examples do not survive. A few rare, dated examples are in the collections of the National Archives and the Kaiser Library in Kathmandu, Nepal, the University of Cambridge, and the British Museum, London.9 During the early second millennium Tibetan monks studying in India produced palm-leaf manuscripts made from regional materials and written in Tibetan language.10 Although palm leaves were not available for making books in Tibet, many Indic palm-leaf manuscripts have been preserved in Tibet’s dry climate.11

Materials and Patronage

The materials used in a book’s production were determined by regional availability and the patron’s preferences, reflecting their aesthetic choices as well as the book’s status and function. Materials were carefully selected for their qualities and suitability for specific types of writing and decorations.

In most instances the last part of the text, called the colophon, recorded patrons, scribes, and the location where the manuscript was created.

Patronage and History of Ownership

In addition to illuminations, this manuscript contains an interesting record of its ownership. The manuscript’s Sanskrit and Tibetan colophons (fig. 10) state that it was produced at Nalanda Monastery in 1073 CE and restored and rededicated in 1151 CE.12 This monastery in eastern India was well known to Tibetans as the major center of Buddhist learning. The book’s two Tibetan colophons translate the Sanskrit and indicate that it was once owned by the renowned Kashmiri scholar Shakyashribhadra (1127 or 1145–1225), educated at Nalanda. Invited to Tibet to teach, he traveled extensively in Tibetan regions from 1204 to 1214. Thereafter, the manuscript belonged to Buton Rinchen Drub (1290–1364), the famous Tibetan scholar and editor of the first Tibetan canon and the founder of Zhalu Monastery. The last Tibetan inscription documents dedicatory use of this book for the benefit of Kunga Gelek Wangchuk.13 These inscriptions reveal networks and connections from the manuscript’s creators and patrons to famous Indian and Tibetan teachers, who treasured the book and passed it down in their turn. 

Other preserved manuscript colophons reveal that an especially high number of Nepalese and Tibetan patrons commissioned such books in India in the first half of the eleventh century, the period when Tibetans were actively acquiring Buddhist culture from India.14