Book

Book found inside the lacquer figure C405A. One of two long sections torn from a large sutra printed in Chinese and illustrated with many wood block cuts. Was accordion type book. Good quality printing with well shaped and nicely arranged characters. Good craftsmanship in the wood cuts. Paper is an old tan of soft but tough texture and is in a strip 13 inches wide. Folds come at 5 inch intervals. The text is from about a quarter of the way into the Diamond sutra (0750a20 and onwards in the Taisho edition). The illustration shows the beginning of a chapter on Virtuous Works and bears the title "No Measure nor Limit to Virtuous Works." It represents a man who, through his good deeds, was enabled to leave his body and come up to Buddha where, in the full realization of the truth of the sutras, he attained to a state of perfect joy.