Sutra of Accumulated Treasures (Daihōshaku-kyō): Chapter 45

The painted gold and silver frontispiece of this elegant sutra illustrates the Buddha flanked by two bodhisattvas delivering a sermon in a simplified landscape setting. Decorated scrolls of this type were commissioned in great numbers as a means of accruing religious merit. Based on stylistic similarities, this scroll may have been one of 5, 400 commissioned by the retired emperor Toba in the mid-twelfth century. A number of these scrolls remain at Jingoji temple north of Kyoto. The text, beautifully written in standard block script, describes the ways bodhisattvas should conduct themselves in order to achieve enlightenment.