Antique Burmese Buddhist Gilt Kammavaca Manuscript in Lacquered Sadaik Box. 

Size: 24 x 8 1/2 x 7 in. 

The box is crafted from wood and coated with multiple layers of natural lacquer resin in a classic palette of cinnabar red, black, orange, and green. The elaborate design, created using the ket-yun (incised) technique, illustrates figures, architecture, and foliage, depicting the story of Prince Vessantara as the Buddha-to-be. The manuscript (or sutra) is a sacred Buddhist text, comprised of tablets or leaves typically made from a thin strip of bamboo or palm covered with cloth and coated with red lacquer and gold leaf decoration. The text, written in the ancient religious language of Pali using a square Burmese script, is applied with black lacquer. These manuscripts contain passages from the Vinaya Pitaka, the monastic code of discipline, and were traditionally used for monastic rituals such as ordination. Small holes in the pages allow a string or cord to bind the leaves together into a book. These works can be quite rare, although they are still produced today, and for hundreds of years texts like these were transported or preserved in boxes in this fashion to protect them from the climate and to spread the word of the Buddha.

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