The painting in vivid colours on a silk cloth (originally measuring approximately 158 by 60 centimetres) survives in three parts, whose proper relation to one another and digital reconstruction (shown here) was published by Zsuzsanna Gulácsi.

Below the ten firmaments of heaven are the eight layers of the Earth, the Mount Meru is shown as a mushroom-shaped mountain on the ground where humans live; and hell is depicted in the lowermost part.

[5] In 2009, Professor Yoshida raised an idea that this painting might constitute a Chinese version of Mani's Book of Pictures, and subsequently by Gábor Kósa.

[6] In her book Mani's Pictures: The Didactic Images of the Manichaeans from Sasanian Mesopotamia to Uygur Central Asia and Tang-Ming China, the Hungarian-born American art historian Zsuzsanna Gulácsi, who is also a specialist in Manichaean art, explaining the possible relation between this painting and Mani's Book of Pictures.

After the introduction of hanging scrolls into Manichaean artistic production by the 10th century, it started to integrate a number of individual canonical images in one composite display.