Early Buddhist Manuscripts: the Palm-Leaf Tradition October 24, 2008

This display of the Museum's rare holding of Indian illuminated palm-leaf manuscripts focuses on one remarkable Mahayanist Buddhist text, the Perfection of Wisdom, "Ashtasahasrika Prajnaparamita Sutra." In the Buddhist pantheon, this meditation text is also represented in a personified form as the goddess of the same name. These superbly illustrated folios are supported by related illuminated book covers, sculptures, and Tibetan thankas. A vast body of Indian religious texts was recorded and transmitted though the medium of the palm-leaf manuscript. This humble form of the book, at once both fragile and resilient, has provided the vehicle for transmitting Indian religious thought for more than 2,000 years and has been a medium for preserving some of the earliest-known surviving paintings from India.