Tibetan Nomad’s Travelling Manuscript & Box

This lengthy sutra manuscript numbers hundreds of loose pages on unstained paper. Each page is double-sided and each page of text is filled with nine lines of extremely fine, hand-written Tibetan uchen script in black ink.

Several title and end pages at the front and back feature hand-done miniature paintings of deities and stupas. There are thus a total of eight miniatures.

Curiously, several pages are impressed or embossed in the bottom right corners with stamps in what appears to be Russian cyrillic script. These stamps seem to be 19th or early 20th century in style and have been impressed onto the paper after the paper was written on.

The leaves mostly are in very good condition with only the end pages tending to be more frayed around the edges.

The manuscript is stored in a pinewood box which has been coloured red with gold flower motifs and Buddhistic reverse swastika having been stencilled over it. (There is some old European-style handwriting and numbering on the inside cover of the box.)

Such a manuscript was commissioned to be transportable and most probably was intended for use by a Tibetan nomad for private ritual and prayer.