English: Handscroll, gold and silver on indigo-dyed paper, with gilt-copper scroll ends; the frontispiece with the Buddha preaching to two monks and accompanied by two bodhisattvas, followed by long passages of scripture and with red seal of the Jingoji Temple

10 x 164 1/4in (25.5 x 417.2cm) Footnotes

This lavishly decorated sutra is part of a famous set of 5000 scriptures that were said to have been commissioned by Emperor Toba (1103-1156), and completed by his son Emperor Go-Shirakawa in 1185. The frontispiece of the sutra depicts the Buddha preaching at Vulture Peak. At the beginning of the text, and below the title of the sutra, is the seal of the Jingoji Temple in red. The text is written in gold clerical script within lines ruled in silver. A very similar frontispiece illustration, together with the red seal of the temple, is in the collection of the Goto Art Museum (Nihon no shakyo ten [Exhibition of copied Buddhist scripture in Japan], Sano Art Museum, 1980, p. 58, fig. 39 and p. 77). Other scrolls from the set are in the collections of the Kyoto National Museum (www.kyohaku.go.jp/jp/dictio/shoseki/74jingoji.html) and the Art Institute of Chicago (2008.157; http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/193241).