Antique Tibetan Prayer Book (Manuscript), possibly 18th or earlier, with wooden bottom cover and forty black paper pages (sutra), each with finely hand written Sanskrit on both sides in gold and silver paint, plus silk inlaid wood and paper inserts and silk cover. Size: 5'' x 14.5'' x 3'', 13 x 37 x 8 cm.CONSIGNOR NOTES: In India in the mid-1970's, along with the interest in everything else Eastern, there was a considerable market in Tibetan antiquities, sold by dealers in the Tibetan Market on Janpath, near the Imperial Hotel, in the Red Fort in Old Delhi, and elsewhere. There was a Tibetan camp in Old Delhi where refugees stayed, and still do, and it was there that we came to know a particular old man, perhaps a Lama, who walked with a limp and a cane, wore a black porkpie hat, and who used to bring very, very fine pieces to sell in Delhi. From this man with the limp we bought this book, which at that time had a wooden, painted cover piece, but which since then has subsequently been lost. There is a good possibility that this book and other pieces made their way into India at a northern Indian Tibetan border area where the funding of resistance efforts, traffic and trade intersected.Article re how the black paper was made--with yak brains http://hyperallergic.com/139434/the-yak-brains-and-crushed-insects-that-made-tibetan-buddhist-bookmaking-beautiful/ Research paper that describes the format/structure of this book perfectly. See page 962. http://www.academia.edu/15973874/Manuscripts_and_Printing_Tibet