This textile is a ‘kesa’, a rectangular garment worn by Japanese Buddhist priests. Kesa are normally made of a sewn patchwork of cloth, the arrangement of the sections of fabric into columns surrounded by a border serving as a mandala, a symbolic rendering of the universe. This is an example of a pictorial kesa. It has an elegant design of butterflies and flowers, the changing ground colour being achieved through the resist-dyeing of the warp threads. The fabric used here was not cut up into individual pieces. Instead, lengths were sewn side by side and silk cord was then sewn onto the surface to represent the traditional patchwork divisions. There are six additional squares of fabric sewn on to the surface,which feature characters from Siddham, a script used for writing Sanskrit from about 500-1200. The characters, known as shittan or bonji, continued to be an important part of Buddhist iconography, and some Japanese sects still use the Siddham script for the writing of mantras and copying of sutras.