MANUSCRIPT COVERS~~When I first saw these manuscript covers I figured that it was something that you could put on a wall and reverse it for a change as they have deities on one side and the 6-syllable mantra on the other. Never did it enter my mind that these were manuscript covers; hey, they are way too large for that! When I was given a tour of the archival libraries of one of the monasteries in the Golden Valley I saw that they were infact manuscript covers as there were several of them up on the higher shelves. This size dates back to the 13th century and they are typically painted on the inside with canonical depictions according to the content of the book.

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