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Prayer scroll fragment, from a prayer wheel

Tibetan

Artwork Details

Prayer scroll fragment, from a prayer wheel
18th century
Tibetan
red and black ink on paper
2 1/4 in. x 7 in. ( 5.72 cm x 17.78 cm )
Museum Purchase
1959/1.158

Description

Subject Matter:

A fragment of a prayer scroll, that is, the text of a prayer printed in red and black ink on a horizontal strip of paper. Such texts were rolled up and placed inside a Tibetan "prayer wheel," a device that can be set spinning. By setting a prayer wheel in motion, a practitioner symbolically allows the efficacy of the prayer to spin out, as though in a centrifugal pattern, through the cosmos.

Physical Description:

A fragment of a horizontal scroll, which would originally have been rolled up and tucked inside a Tibetan prayer wheel, with the text of a prayer printed in red and black ink.

Usage Rights:

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