Artwork

Text, Folio 6 (verso), from a Manuscript of the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines (Ashtasahasrika Prajnaparamita-sutra)

Text, Folio 6 (verso), from a Manuscript of the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines (Ashtasahasrika Prajnaparamita-sutra) is an unspecified painting by Unknown. It dates from 1119 and is held in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. The object is a narrow, elongated sheet of paper bearing a densely packed column of dark brown ink.

About this work

Overview

The object is a narrow, elongated sheet of paper bearing a densely packed column of dark brown ink. The characters are rendered in an early Asian script, forming a passage from a Buddhist sutra. Small circular perforations near the margins suggest the sheet was once part of a larger codex. The paper shows signs of age, with a yellowed surface, occasional tears, and a generally worn appearance.

Subject & Meaning

The text transcribed on the sheet belongs to the *Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines* (Ashtasahasrika Prajnaparamita‑sutra), a central Mahayana Buddhist scripture that expounds the doctrine of emptiness and the path to enlightenment. As a religious document, the passage would have been used for study, recitation, or ritual, embodying the doctrinal core of the Prajnaparamita tradition.

Technique & Style

The perforations were likely made with a simple punch tool to facilitate binding.

The calligraphy is executed with a brush dipped in dark brown ink, producing uniform strokes that reflect the formal script conventions of early medieval East Asia. The tight arrangement of characters maximizes the use of limited space on the narrow folio, a common practice in manuscript production aimed at conserving costly paper. The perforations were likely made with a simple punch tool to facilitate binding.

History & Provenance

Created by hand over a millennium ago, the folio represents a surviving fragment of a larger manuscript that once circulated among Buddhist monastic communities. Its current location in the Cleveland Museum of Art places it among a broader collection of ancient texts, providing scholars with material evidence of script development and religious transmission across centuries.