Illustrated Buddhist Manuscript Palm Leaf Eastern India

The three leaves of the fragmentary Sanskrit manuscript, probably the prajnaparamitasutra, with illustrations including a yellow female divinity, possibly Prajnaparamita, wearing a long diaphanous dhoti and standing against a white halo, a bodhisattva reclining on a charpoy with hands in dharmachakramudra and in discourse with two attendants, possibly the Bodhisattva discussing his return to the earthly realm, and a deity, probably Indra, riding a white elephant, stupas decorating the borders, the binding holes within red and blue rectangles decorated with geometric designs.

Nasli M. Heeramaneck, 1938.

Further leaves of the manuscript, some almost certainly illustrated but now lost, would have confirmed the iconographic context of these three delightful illuminations. The three remaining leaves are illustrated with the quintessential charm of the medieval eastern Indian aesthetic, the swift and free hand giving immediacy and animation to the subjects. Compare the free style of a ca. 1100 Karandavyuhasutra now in the British Library, see Zwalf (ed.), 1985, no. 81, pp. 67-9. Such manuscripts have long been preserved in foreign countries, mostly Tibet and Nepal, taken as precious vehicles of the faith before the Buddhist culture and religious artefacts of the country of their origin were decimated by Muslim incursion. Few such pages remain in India. And the ravages of the Indian climate would probably have done for many that might have survived the onslaughts. The medieval Buddhist manuscripts from India, the spiritual home of the philosophy, not only fulfilled the role of transmission of written teachings, but also introduced the Indian art style to their host countries by way of their illustrations. Nepal had always had close links with their immediate neighbours and had a more or less contemporary growth of artistic style, but Tibet had been starved of contact until about the eleventh century, and would have savoured the art as well as the deeper content of the revered texts. Evidence of Tibetan assimilation of the eastern Indian style may be seen in early thanka paintings such as an eleventh century mandala, see Pal, 2003, pl. 115, p. 176.