Printing and Buddhism in China

The Diamond Sūtra, The World’s Earliest Dated Printed Book from AD 868

Woodblock printing in China is strongly associated with Buddhism, which encouraged the spread of its teachings. In the Tang Dynasty, a Chinese writer named Fenzhi first mentioned in his book Yuan Xian San Ji that the woodblock was used to print Buddhist scriptures during the Zhenguan years (627~649 ACE).

An early example of woodblock printing on paper, was discovered in 1974 in an excavation in Xi’an (then called Chang’an, the capital of Tang Dynasty), Shaanxi, China, whereby individual sheets of paper were pressed into wooden blocks with the text and illustrations carved into them. It is a Dhāraṇī sūtra printed on hemp paper and dated to 650 to 670 ACE, during Tang Dynasty (618–907). Another printed document dating to the early half of the Chinese Tang Dynasty has also been found, the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka Sūtra printed from 690 to 699.

A woodblock print of a Dhāraṇī sūtra dated between 704 and 751 ACE was found at Bulguk-sa, South Korea in 1966. Its Buddhist text was printed on a 8-× 630 cm (3.1" ×-250") mulberry paper scroll in the early Korean Kingdom of Unified Silla. Another version of a Dhāraṇī sūtra, printed in Japan around 770 ACE, is also frequently cited as an example of early printing. One million copies of the sūtra, along with other prayers, were ordered to be produced by Empress Shōtoku. As each copy was then stored in a tiny wooden pagoda, the copies are together known as the Hyakumantō Dhāraṇī (百万塔陀羅尼, One Million Pagodas Dhāraṇī).

The world’s earliest dated (868 ACE) printed book is a Chinese scroll about sixteen feet long and containing the text of the Diamond Sūtra. It was found in 1907 by the archaeologist Sir Marc Aurel Stein in Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, and is now in the British Museum. The book displays a great maturity of design and layout and speaks of a considerable ancestry for woodblock printing. The colophon, at the inner end, reads: Reverently [caused to be] made for universal free distribution by Wang Jie on behalf of his two parents on the 13th of the 4th moon of the 9th year of Xiantong [i.e. 11 May, 868 ACE] .

In late 10th century China the complete Buddhist Tripiṭaka of 130,000 pages was printed with blocks, which took between 1080 and 1102, and many other very long works were printed. Early books were on scrolls, but other book formats were developed. First came the Jingzhe zhuang or “sūtra binding”, a scroll folded concertina-wise, which avoided the need to unroll half a scroll to see a passage in the middle. About AD 1000 “butterfly binding” was developed; two pages were printed on a sheet, which was then folded inwards. The sheets were then pasted together at the fold to make a codex with alternate openings of printed and blank pairs of pages. In the fourteenth century the folding was reversed outwards to give continuous printed pages, each backed by a blank hidden page. Later the bindings were sewn rather than pasted. Only relatively small volumes (juan) were bound up, and several of these would be enclosed in a cover called a tao, with wooden boards at front and back, and loops and pegs to close up the book when not in use. For example one complete Tripiṭaka had over 6,400 juan in 595 tao.