CHINA, YONGLE PERIOD (1402-1424)

The present sutra cover was likely made for one of the 108 volumes of the BKa-gyur, a sacred text representing the word of the Buddha. According to Dr. Peter Lam in Layered Beauty, Hong Kong, 2010, p. 54, two sets of BKa-gyur were bestowed sequentially by the Emperor Yongle to two Buddhist abbots from Tibet in 1413 and 1416, now preserved at the Potala Palace and the Sera Monastery in Lhasa, respectively.
A similar set of covers, formerly in the Florence and Herbert Irving Collection, is dated c. 1410 and now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is published by J.C.Y. Watt and B.B. Ford in East Asian Lacquer: The Florence and Herbert Irving Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1991, pp. 116 and 117. The authors note that these lacquered covers provide the earliest examples of Ming-style qiangjin work. Recently, a pair of qiangjin gilt-decorated red-lacquered sutra covers from the Yongle period sold at Christie's New York, 23-24 March 2023, lot 1212, for $63,900.

The inscription in Tibetan lists the contents of the sutra contained therein, and can be translated as:

"Collection of sutras contained in section pha:
The Sutra 'The Questions of Sagaramati'
The Sutra 'The Questions of the Naga King Sagara,' three classes of beings
The Sutra 'The Questions of the Naga King Anavatapa'
The Sutra 'The Questions of the Kinnara King Druma'"