2-740-246 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Seven Leaves from a Manuscript of the Gandavyuha-sutra (Scripture of the Supreme Array), 1000s-1100s. The main character of the Sanskrit Buddhist text from which these pages come is a pilgrim named Sudhana. As part of his quest to reach enlightenment, he seeks friends and teachers who will reveal to him the qualities of a bodhisattva—an ideal being of compassion. On the second leaf from the top, a bodhisattva is shown surrounded by clouds. Sudhana himself is featured in the remaining paintings, in the woods with wild animals and shaded cubistic rocks. He is shown reverently receiving advice from a Hindu forest sage. These leaves are from one of the earliest surviving illustrated manuscripts of Nepal. The paintings are rare examples of the fine and sensitive style of this period, with lilting lines, delicate patterns, and shaded hues. Originally from a long horizontal book of approximately 350 palm leaves, now dispersed among many collections, the pages would have been bound into the book by strings running through the two holes in the center of the pages.