This article is an in-depth study of the iconography, form, style, and literary source material of an Eleven-faced Avalokitesvara statue that was originally collected in Tōnomine in Nara but which has since been moved to Tokyo National Museum. The statue shows an almost word-to-word conformity with descriptive passages from the Ekādasamukha-sūtra, a Buddhist sutra which is closely related to the formation of the concept of "dansō" (sandalwood statue) in Buddhist art. The author concludes that the statue was a cooperative work by members of a prominent group of sculptors in the Chinese continent made in the Tang Dynasty sometime after the middle of the 7th century when the original and updated translations of the Ekādasamukha-sūtra were successively created.
