Many-Jeweled Stupa Reliquary (Tahōtō shari yōki) (early to mid-1300s): Art, History and Details

Many-Jeweled Stupa Reliquary (Tahōtō shari yōki) (early to mid-1300s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Earthen mounds that marked the sites of interred relics in ancient India are called stupas. As Buddhism traveled through East Asia, the mounds took on the form of towers called “pagodas” by Westerners. This miniature tower, painted with Buddhist deities on the interiors of the doors on each side, likely once held items considered to be sacred relics. The deities on the doors have been tentatively identified as the four bodhisattvas of the sacred text the Lotus Sutra, and two Guardian Kings known as Niō.

Object facts

• Title: Many-Jeweled Stupa Reliquary (Tahōtō shari yōki)
• Date: early to mid-1300s
• Culture: Japan, Kamakura period (1185–1333)
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: wood and metal
• Dimensions: Average: 68 x 34.4 cm (26 3/4 x 13 9/16 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1982.8

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “Year in Review for 1982.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 70, no. 1 (January 1983): 3–55.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.