ABSTRACT
Opening a palm-leaf manuscript of the Perfection of Wisdom S ūtra now in the Asia Society, New York (Acc. No. 1987.001), we encounter six panels of beautiful paintings and a sea of Sanskrit letters on the fi rst two pages of long, narrow folios ( Figure 3.1 ). 1 Four decorative bands divide each folio into three compartments, and a rectangular panel is placed in the middle of each section. The colorful painted panels shine like studded jewels against the earthy color of palm leaf, although the pigments used on these panels are not luminous. Despite their miniature size, each panel measuring only roughly two by two inches, the paintings’ presence is visually powerful enough to command our attention. Equally commanding are the six rows of letters written in black ink from left to right without any spaces, comparable to the practice of scriptura continua in ancient and early medieval manuscripts from Europe (Saenger 1997).
