Meta-Discourse on the Teachings from the Treasury (Abidharmakosha-Bhashya) (1100s): Art, History and Details

Meta-Discourse on the Teachings from the Treasury (Abidharmakosha-Bhashya) (1100s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This religious text relates some of the teachings of the great fourth-century Indian Buddhist scholar Vasubhandhu. The text analyzes human consciousness in its relationship to the environment and transformations that occur during meditation. This scroll is the 17th part of a 30-part translation of the text by Xuanzang, an eminent seventh-century Chinese monk.

Object facts

• Title: Meta-Discourse on the Teachings from the Treasury (Abidharmakosha-Bhashya)
• Date: 1100s
• Culture: Japan, Heian period (794–1185)
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: handscroll; gold and silver on indigo-dyed paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 26.4 x 670.6 cm (10 3/8 x 264 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Handscroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1916.1060

A detail from the museum

The frontispiece depicts the Buddha Shakyamuni preaching in a paradisical landscape.

Collection credit

Worcester R. Warner Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Catalogue of the Inaugural Exhibition June 6-September 20, 1916. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1916.
• Lee, Sherman E. Japanese Decorative Style. [Cleveland]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1961.
• Vilbar, Sinéad. "The Japanese Art Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1915-1951." In Great Waves & Mountains: Perspectives and Discoveries in Collecting the Arts of Japan. Natsu Oyobe, and Allysa B. Peyton, eds., 160–197. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2022.

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.