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I recently acquired this 16th century tibet statue, and as i was handling it, i removed a wood block. I found this paper wrapped with cotton/cloth material, and saw some type of writing on the paper. Any idea what it might be? How should i proceed from here?

Dear Kevin,Could you provide a picture of your buddha?I am curious to see it because I doubt it could be tibetan because such rolls are the consecration material placed inside metal statues not wood-at least to my knowledge.I could tell you the name of the divinity and maybe other things because I am specialized-not expert!-in tibetan art,especialy in buddhas.I hope to recieve an answer from you soon. Rémy

Jere is one of the photos

Another photo

Hi Reme, here is the last photo i took

Hello,

I'm not sure about Tibetan statues but this sounds more like a Chinese old tradition.

In the back of the statue there is a carved masked hole containing,as the one on your photo, a good luck/protection message, herbs, insects etc... dedicated at a family or a person.

The statue, normally a Chinese God, can be used several times by different people. Therefore the statue could be older than the message it contains.

It is not unusual to find those statues for sale at the entrance of a temple for believers to buy, put a message in it, and place it in the temple.

I have 2 of those statues, bought in China, near Tibetan borders, both with message dated from the 18th century.

It will be nice if we could see a photo of the statue, and even the message, for more info.

Cheers

I posted several photos earlier, do you need to see more?

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