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Kalpa-sutra manuscript with 24 illuminations

c. 1475–1500
Gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper

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In the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland · as of July 2026

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FROM THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART’S CATALOG

Though paper manuscripts would have been wrapped in cloth rather than bound with string, conservative manuscript producers located the place for the string's hole with a red dot. Dating back to at least the early centuries of the first millennium, the text is written in Sanskrit in an Indian script known as devanagari . The smaller text written in the margins is a commentary that discusses the meaning of the main text.

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