Bishamonten
Not on view
These printed images of Bishamonten (Sanskrit: Vaishravana), the divine guardian of the north, were found inside a sculpture of the deity in the Jūrin'in subtemple of Nakagawadera, a temple northeast of Nara. To make the print, a block bearing a single image of Bishamonten was stamped a total of one thousand times.
According to inscriptions on sheets of the same print in other collections, the images were made as an offering to the deity during a ritual service. They were placed inside the statue on the seventh day of the third month in 1162.
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