Official Letter from the Office for the Establishment of Tōdai-ji temple

This document from the Tōdaiji Construction Bureau (Zō Tōdaiji Shi), the department charged with building and other tasks at Tōdaiji Temple, requests that 230 scrolls of scripture be transferred to Kōfukuji Temple so that they can be checked. The signature of the head of the office, Saeki no Ima-Emishi (719–790), appears at the end of the document. This scroll comes from the Shōsōin. {br=>[[]], content=>[This is an official letter from the office for the establishment of Tōdai-ji temple to Kōfuku-ji temple dated April 21, 755. The establishment office asks for 230 sutra scrolls from Kōfuku-ji temple in the name of Saeki-no-Imaemishi, who was the director of the establishment office. The letter was written by Kurehara-no-Ikuhito, who was the subordinate administrator of the office for sutra copying. The signatures of Saeki-no-Imaemishi and Kurehara-no-Ikuhito are written at the end of the scroll., According to this letter, 230 sutra scrolls were sorted in sutra covers; the first ninety-six volumes were the Empress Dowager Kōmyō's sutra scrolls, and the remaining one hundred and thirty-four volumes were for the archives.

There is a note in the letter which says that the both scrolls and covers of the latter group should be imported objects from the Tang dynasty in China. The color of the scroll paper, the front cover, the braids, and the scroll-cores are specified, which is helpful in studying the sutra scroll mountings of those days. The official letter introduced in this article is a significant object since it exceeds the length of other old documents which were originally kept in the Shōsō-in treasure house, and it is a complete official letter from the establishment office of Tōdai-ji temple.]}

— Museum description: Nara National Museum (CC BY 4.0), via ColBase / Japan Search.