Japanese manuscript sūtra fragment (弘仁時代寫經).

Japanese manuscript sūtra fragment (弘仁時代寫經).

Kōnin period (810–824).

Gift of Xia Wei and Soren Edgren.

This manuscript fragment, which dates from Japan’s Kōnin era, contains a portion of text from one of the prajñāpāramitā sūtras, a body of Buddhist teachings focusing on the perfection of wisdom as realized through śūnyatā, or emptiness. Hand copied onto fine, 9th-century paper, the elegant script was made with a brush. Copying sūtras was considered a meritorious practice among Buddhists, and the prajñāpāramitā sūtras were among those most copied at the time.

From the collection of Rare Book School