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A Sino-Tibetan folded book printed in Beijing in 1410, with dhāranīs in Sanskrit written in Tibeto-Nepali characters and woodcuts of protective mantra-diagrams and deities, block printed on heavy white paper. Breathtakingly detailed printing in red ink, 40 years before Gutenberg. 
The script is Ranjana/ Lantsha, an ornamental form of post-Gupta Brahmi. The text is printed twice, once on each side of the paper, so that the book may be read in the Indo-Tibetan manner by turning the pages from right to left or in Chinese style by turning from left to right.
The ink was likely made from cinnabar (mercury sulphide). As a very broad generalisation, Chinese inks tend to be more colourfast over the long term than Western ones. The thick paper, the printing & the binding painted with the 1000-Buddhas motif are all of the highest quality.
The text comprises a sequence of Tibetan Buddhist recitation texts, some including the kalpa, i.e. the text that lays down the ritual procedures and observances entailed in their application. The book is printed without spaces between its fourteen constituent texts.
Radio-carbon dating has established that the paper in this book was almost certainly produced between 1370 & 1450. Thus while the blocks of such books are sometimes used for centuries, this particular example likely belongs to the first edition produced with these blocks in 1410.
