Fragment of a Prajnaparamita Sutra manuscript folio

This is a rare and early representation of the goddess personification of the Prajnaparamita Sutra text. She is shown two armed, gesturing the turning of the wheel, the wisdom teaching mudra, dharmachakra. She is seen seated on a lotus cushion with floating ribbons along with energy waves that radiate from her body into the heat of the encircling mandorla. She wears a beautifully patterned waist skirt. All is contained in a pillared shrine, with diaper-patterned uprights and a six-cusped arch with red curtains and pendant lotus buds. The goddess fixes the devotee with a unfaltering gaze. The figure’s exaggerated and stylized treatment of anatomy typifies the Kashmiri painting style as practiced in the western Himalayas. Colors are radiant and have a luminosity that enhances the figure’s other-worldliness. The goddess floats against a gold to red radiance that is in turn enveloped in a rainbow aureole of red, yellow and green. All is set against a deep blue ground. This painting belonged to an edition of the Prajnaparamita Sutra, a text largely composed of spells and charms (dharani) which was widely worshipped in 10th–12th centuries, widely copied as an act of merit. Its recitation was understood to bring protection and material benefit to all who worshipped it. A provenance to Tholing monastery or another in that monastery’s sphere of influence seems probable. Nearly identical painted folios now in LACMA were purchased by G. Tucci at Tholing in the 1930s.