Sutra Box with Lotus Flowers and Seed Syllables

Designed to hold a scroll of Buddhist scripture, or sutra, this lacquered box bears designs rendered in gold maki-e of lotuses blooming in a pond and two seed syllables, or holy Sanskrit characters that represent buddhas or bodhisattvas. In this case, the syllables stand in for two different manifestations of the bodhisattva Kannon, or Avalokitesvara in Sanskrit: White-robed Kannon and Juntei Kannon. White-robed Kannon is included among the standard “Thirty-three Manifestations of Kannon” developed in China, while Juntei Kannon—the sole female manifestation—is included in the “Six Manifestations of Kannon” associated with the Shingon sect of Buddhism.