Leaf from a Buddhist manuscript, showing an eight-armed goddess

This rare, thousand-year-old manuscript leaf comes from a text called the Perfection of Wisdom. Yet that text makes no mention of the multi-armed esoteric deity illuminated at the center of the leaf. But by collating different leaves now residing in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Virginia, an astonishing pattern emerges: the various multi-armed deities comprise a mandala, a company of esoteric Buddhist deities.