 | A series of talks on the history of the written word 18. Early printing in Asia. (Contents list) |
Printing in Asia predated printing in Europe, as did the production and use of paper. Blockbooks and
moveable types were both used.
Most printing was done from blocks of pear wood, sized, and covered with thin paper previously written on
so that the writing shows through in reverse. Cutting was quick and skilled. No press was used, simply a
double headed brush, one end for applying the ink and the other for brushing the paper flat. It was
possible to produce 2,000 copies a day.
In China seals were the first manifestation of printing, if this is defined as inking a surface to
produce multiple impressions. The Chinese word yin means both seal and printing. Seals are first mention
255 BCE but only in the 5th century did clay impressions give way to red ink, impressed rather like the
modern rubber stamp.
Stone rubbings were also a precursor. Between 175 and 183 the standard text of six Confucian classics were
cut in stone at the gates of the state academy. It is reported that the carts of scholars jammed the
streets so that rubbing could be taken. The earliest extant rubbing, found at Tun Huang, dated from
627/649. It was mainly a Confucian practice and continued after the invention of printing up to the present
day.
The Tang dynasty stared in 618 and, after an age of darkness, brought in a period of great
creativity and toleration. Buddhism took root and provided a great impetus to the arts. One of the ways of
gaining merit was the ceaseless repetition of passages of scriptures orally or in writing - this is the
origin of prayer wheels. The use of stamps for this purpose was soon realised. Both Buddhists and Taoists
did this by stamping into clay. The British Museum has paper from Chinese Turkestan with 468 repeated
impressions of the Buddha. The transition to the use of larger blocks facing upwards was an obvious step
and in the 7th century there were experiments in Buddhist monasteries using stamps, stencils and blocks.
704/751 The Great Dharani Sutra was printed in this period. The text was translated from Sanskrit
into Chinese in 704 and it is thought to have been produced in Luoyang, the capital of the Tang dynasty.
The text is the oldest extant printed material in the world. The pagoda itself was built in 751, and the
print must have been made before that date. It is 620 cm in length and eight cm in width and consists of
eleven sheets. The print contains, on average, eight to nine characters per line. It was discovered in the
Sokkatap pagoda of the Pulguk temple following an attempted robbery in 1966.
Japan was a great emulator of China. A university was established at the capita Nara. An imperial
seal is known from 629 and provincial seals from 704, probably made in wood. Printed textiles are known
from the 8th century. In 765 the Japanese empress initiated a major publishing venture. Empress Koken first
reigned from 749 to 758. Following a rebellion, she reascended the throne as Empress Shotoku from 765 until
her death in 770. In the year of her resumption of the throne, she commissioned one million small wooden
pagodas 10 cm high, each containing a small piece of paper (typically 6 x 45 cm) printed with a Buddhist
text, the Vimalasuddhaprabhasa mahadharani sutra (Mukujoko daidarani kyo). It is thought they were printed
in Nara, where the facilities, craftsmen and skills existed to undertake such large scale production. The
material of the blocks is unascertained, but the paper is hemp. Their creation was completed around 770,
and they were distributed to temples around the country. Many of them survive today.
Early mentions of printing in China.
835. An imperial edit forbids the private printing of calendars for reasons of inaccuracy. Szechuan
(kingdom of Shu) and the Lower Yangtze valley (kingdom of Wu) seem to be centres from the start.
845. The period of toleration came to an end. 4,600 Buddhist temples were destroyed and 250,000 forced back
to lay life. Probably much printed material was destroyed. No printing survives from this period but there
is evidence that an attempt was made to reprint a Buddhist work burned in about 845.
847/850. It was reported by the poet Fan Shi (fl. 860/874) that an official Hokan Chi had thousands of
copies of a biography printed and distributed in the province of Kiang Si.
865. A Japanese catalogue mentions two books printed in Szechuan which had been brought back from China by
pilgrims.
868 The date of the Diamond Sutra (Prajna Paramita) the earliest dated printed book. It also
bears the name of the printer Wang Chieh. It was discovered in Tun Huang, Chinese Turkestan, in the Caves
of the Thousand Buddhas by Sir Aurel Stein in 1907. The cave of manuscripts had been discovered in 1900 by
a Taoist priest restoring a fresco covering a blocked entrance. The cave was three metres square and piled
with 1,130 bundles of manuscripts. Stein negotiated 3,000 manuscripts for the British Museum. The rolls
were dated 406-996 and were all on paper. They were probably sealed up around 1035 by religious cave
dwellers and forgotten. The documents were in perfect condition and written in Chinese and other languages,
even Hebrew selections from the Old testament.
Other printed material in the cave includes many charms, calendars dated 877 and 882, four other printed
rolls and one screen folded book, on a roll pasted back to back, dated 949.
883 Books seen in Szechuan were mentioned by Liu Pien, a government official "Most of these books were
printed with blocks on paper but they were so smeared and blotted that they were not readily legible".
These early books wre mainly those of the common people; astrological, religious but also lexographic.
Printing seems to be confined to a limited area around Szechan.
907 Szechan became independent as the empire of Shu after the end of the Tang dynasty and printing was
sponsored by the statesman Wu Chao I. When poor he had tried in vain to borrow books. He vowed that
when in power he would cut books in wood for scholars. Later as prime minister he was able to do this and
the nine classic texts were printed.
929-934. China briefly reconquered Shu and adopted the idea of printing as a government
responsibility.
932-953. Feng Tao, the chief adviser under four dynasties and ten emperors during a period of civil
war was an able statesman and quick to see the advantages of state printing. In 932 he and colleagues
issued a memorial to the effect that "during the Han dynasty Confucian scholars were honoured and their
works cut in stone. There was no time for this now, but block books, as in the kingdoms of Wu (Kiang Su)
and Shu (Szechuan) could be cut. There were no classics in their works, but the classics could be revised
and printed in that form". The imperial decree was issued and the work of revising the text was assigned to
the National Academy. Expert calligraphers were employed to copy the agreed text. The work lasted 21 years,
interrupted by civil war and other upheavals. In 953 the works and commentaries were completed in 130
volumes, probably about the same time as the project of the rival Wu Chao I in the kingdom of Shu. Feng Tao
is honoured in China like Gutenberg in Europe, but he was clearly not the first. He was also primarily
interested in establishing an authentic text for study - and government prestige. It was seen as a
makeshift alternative to the cutting of works in stone for rubbing. Yet it must have given an impetus to
printing. It is significant that the private printing of the classics was forbidden in an edict of 1064 in
the interest of textual accuracy.
960 The Song dynasty brought a high tide of Chinese printing, both official and private. All major literary
works were printed in an unsurpassed quality and much still survives. Printing was used by all major
religions except Christians. The calligrapher's name is usually found beside the author and printer. Books
now began to be folded, rather than being issued in scrolls.
947, 983. These are the dates of votive offerings and charms at Tun Huang.
956, 975. Sutras printed at Chekiang.
971-983. The Buddhist canon (Tripitaka) printed in 130,000 pages.
996-1063. The great dynastic histories were printed.
985. Books began to be imported into Japan. The printing of Buddhist literature began there in the 11th
century.
1108. The oldest surviving Chinese woodblock.
1011. In Korea work on the first Korean translation of the Tripitaka began in 1011 and was completed
in 1087. The act of carving the woodblocks was considered to be a way of bringing about a change in fortune
by invoking the Buddha's help. It was based primarily on the Northern Song Tripitaka completed in the 10th
century and contained around 6,000 volumes.
1237-1249. A second edition of the Korean Tripitaka was commissioned to replace the blocks lost during the
Mongol invasions. It was carved onto 81,258 wooden printing blocks with 52,330,152 characters, organized
in over 1496 titles and 6568 volumes. Each wood block measures 24 cm by 70 cm, varying in thickness from
2.6 to 4 cm and weighing 3-4 kg each. The text is extremely accurate and most of the original blocks
survive.
1041-1049 Moveable type was invented in China. The invention of Pi-Sheng invention is
recorded in the esaays of his contemporary Shen Kua: During the reign of Chingli Pi Sheng, a man in cotton
cloth (a commoner) also made moveable type. His method was a follows: he took sticky clay and cut it in
characters as tin as the edge of a cash. Each charaters formed as it were a single type. He baked them in a
fire to make them hard. He had previously prepared an iron plate and he had covered this plate with a
mixture of pine resin, pitch and paper ashes. When he wished to print he took and iron frame and set it on
the iron plate. In this he placed the type set close together. He then placed it near a fire to warm it.
When the paste was slightly melted he took a perfectly smooth board and rubbed it over the surface so that
the block of type became as even as a whetstone. As a rule he kept two forms going. While the impression
was being made from the one forme, the type was being put in place on the other. For each character there
were several types and for certain common characters there were 20 or more type each. The reason why he did
not use wood is because the tissue of the wood is sometimes coarse and sometimes fine."
Type was also made of tin, perforated to be held by a wire but, like earthenware, these worked poorly
because of the nature of the inks used. So, despite reservation wooden characters were cut.
1213. Currency shows the use of moveable type for serial and mint numbers.
1227-1279 The Mongol invasion of China, culminated, after a long series of campaigns, in Kublai Khan
becoming the Emperor of a unified China and establishing the Yuan dynasty. There was much destruction, but
printing still continued and in many ways the Mongol invasions helped in its spread.
1313. Wang Chen described in his Book of agriculture the making of types by cutting on a block of
wood and then sawing apart and finishing with a knife. They were kept in a revolving tray with five layers,
the primary arrangement by the tones of the Chinese language. In all 60,000 characters were cut. The
sources for this are not authenticated though the description is quite detailed.
1300. Approximate date of a font of wooden type, found in Tun Huang by Paul Pelliot. It is in the Uighur
script, which is alphabetic, but is used with Chinese characters with blocks cut for whole words.
Korea. Block printing had been adopted early. Printing with moveable type was developed around 1234
but fell into disuse, although the British Library has two books tentatively dated to 1317 and 1324,
although these may be later copies.
1392. The weak Korya dynasty was overthrown. General Yi founded a new dynasty modelled on the Ming dynasty
in China. The administration was reconstructed on Confucian principles with literature and the arts
encouraged. To propagate the new official doctrine a Department of Books was established in 1392 to cast
metal types and print books.
1403. Work was begun at the expense of Tsai Tung, Yi's son and successor. He told the court in 1403:
"I desire to have types moulded in copper with which to print all books I may get hold of to make their
contents more widely known (a fine contrast to Sir William Berkeley in Virginia who said in 1670: "I thank
God that we have neither schools nor printing"). Several hundred thousand types were cast in bronze.
Between 1403 and 1544 there were five decrees on printing.
1409. This is the date of the earliest known book printed from moveable type. Many Korean incunabula suvive
in libraries in the country.
1420. A second font was produced. This was smaller and less legible.
1434. A larger face was cut with 200,000 types produced in two months. It was possible to double output to
forty sheets a day. There was great enthusiasm; the bells of monasteries were melted down. In 1422 a
chronicler wrote: "There will be no book left unprinted and no man who does not learn. Literature and
religion will make daily progress and the cause of morality must gain enormously." In about 1434 a Korean
alphabetical script was developed by the emperor influenced by Tibetan script and Sanskrit books imported
by monks. Type was cast for the alphabet and one book is recorded, but it was used in conjunction with
Chinese characters, one piece of type carrying a Chinese character and phonetic symbols. As with the Uighur
wood types the final step was not made. There was also opposition from jealous scholars who were afraid
that the status of scholarship would be lowered.
The scholar Seong Hyeon (1439–1504) described the Korean font-casting process: "At first, one cuts letters
in beech wood. One fills a trough level with fine sandy clay. Wood-cut letters are pressed into the sand,
then the impressions become negative and form moulds. At this step, placing one trough together with
another, one pours the molten bronze down into an opening. The fluid flows in, filling these negative
moulds, one by one becoming type. Lastly, one scrapes and files off the irregularities, and piles them up
to be arranged. The texture of types preserved in the American Museum of Natural History in New York, bears
this description out. They are grooved along the foot to help in alignment and are also held in columns by
bamboo strips.
The pracise of printing with moveable types appears to have ceased in the 16th century after eleven founts
had been cut although there was a brief revival in the late 18th century.
Japan received a European press in 1590 at Nagasaki through the Jesuit missionary Alessandro
Valignano. In 1595 he boasted in a letter that not only had they printed a Japanese grammar and dictionary,
but also several books, mostly the lives of saints and martyrs, in romanised Japanese language. However
printing equipment brought back by Toyotomi Hideyoshi's army in 1593 from Korea had far greater influence
on the development of printing with moveable type. In 1597 Tokugawa Ieyasu, even before becoming shōgun,
oversaw the creation of the first native movable type, using wooden type-pieces rather than metal. About
100,000 type-pieces were produced, used to print a number of political and historical texts.
An edition of the Confucian Analects was printed in 1598 using metal moveable type printing equipment at
the order of Emperor Go-Yōzei. This document is the oldest work of Japanese moveable type printing extant
today. Despite the appeal of moveable type, however, it was soon decided that the running script style of
Japanese writings would be better reproduced using woodblocks. By 1640 they were once again being used for
nearly all purposes. In addition twenty-six Catholics were crucified in 1597 and in 1603 Tokugawa Ieyasu
banned Christianity in Japan, and Western printing technology was only reintroduced to Nagasaki in 1848.
China continued to use moveable type.
1662. A fount for 1,500,000 copper type was cut and cast.
1713-1722. The printing of a 6,000 volume encyclopaedia was undertaken, using a fount of 250,000 copper
type. This was the hey-day of Chinese printing. Soon after a shortage of small coinage meant that the type
were melted down between 1736 and 1744.
1772. The emperor Chien Lung ordered a search for rare books for transcription and preservation. A
committee examined 10,000 titles of which one third were selected for the imperial library. In 1773 Chin
Chien, the superintendant of the printing office, was ordered to cut the selected books in wood. Chin
submitted memorials that to would be cheaper to use wood moveable type and 250,000 sorts were cut. By 1794
134 titles were completed including, in 1776, the Imperial Printing Office manual for moveable type.
The reasons for general lack of success are:
1.The nature of the Chinese script. European alphabetical scripts cry out for methods of mass producing
moveable types.
2. Calligraphy as an art form. Fine examples of the art are better from a block book or stone rubbing than
from monotonous moveabletype. Autograph books fromstone inscriptions are known from 992.
The spread of printing to the West.
Printing of Uighur Turks. Many documents in great disarray have been found in great refuse heaps in
Turfan, a large depression in the Earth's surface about 400 km north-west of Tun Huang. The area was a
meeting place of cultures, religions and languages. Papers were found in six languages: Uighur, Chinese,
Sanskrit, Tangut, Tibetan and Mongol, largely as screenfolds rather than the stitched codex used by
Christians. None were dated but they were probably produced in a period leading up to the 13th century. The
Uighurs were one of the first peoples to be absorbed by the Mongols, in 1206. They were using moveable
type abut this time and introduced the Mongols to literacy.
Mongol conquests. In the 13th century the Mongols penetrated as far as Russia, Hungary and Poland.
At Tabriz in Persia a colony of an international character grew up on a crossroads of long-distance trade
routes. There was an Italian colony there, and printing was certainly in use, among other things for paper
mney. In China Kubla Khan adopted a Chinese way of life, including woodblock printing. Marco Polo was one
of many European visitors. But with the collapse of their empire in 1368 the trade routes were closed. If
block printing were introduced into Eurpe from that source, it must have been by that date.
Mohammedan conservatism. A new barrier was also introduced because, unlike with Buddhists, Islam was
opposed to the reduplication of scriptures. The Koran was given to the Arabs in spoken and manuscript form,
so that was the only way of perpetuating it. Even today the Koran is learned by heart and produced in the
Islamic world only by lithography, which has greater similarity to maunscript than does the use of moveable
type. There was almost no printing in the Islamic world until 1825 when a press was established in Cairo.
The Arabs were wide travellers and adopted paper but although they knew of woodblock printing, they did not
widely adopt it. Thay knew of paper money printed with woodblock technique in the Mongol khanate Il-Khanete
(1260-1353) in
Tabriz, Persia, in 1294. A detailed description of Chinese printing technique was provided by Rashid al-Din
(1247-1318), a
Persian scholar, in his Jami al-Tawarikh (Collected Histories) in 1311. He also chronicled the spread of
the new
technology from Il-Khanete to Egypt during the Mameluke dynasty (1250-1517) founded by the Turks.
Egypt. In 1880 many documents were discovered in Egypt near El Faiyum which are now in the National
Library in Vienna and in the collections of the Egyptian Exploration Society which owns about half a
million texts, the largest collection of papyri in the world. These texts are housed in the Sackler Library
at the University of Oxford and provide an extraordinary snapshot into the ordinary lives of Egyptians from
the early Ptolemaic to the Fatimid era, the third century BCE to the 14th century. It includes about fifty
examples of woodblock printing, all in Arabic, except for one with a Coptic gloss. There is a great variety
of format and technique. They are dated from 900 to 1350 from calligraphic evidence,but earlier ones may be
13th century imitations. They are all religious in nature, charms, prayers, even extracts from the Koran
printed in Arabic during 1300-1350. There is both text and decoration, but no representations of living
things, in accordance with Islamic tradition. Fragments of block-printing on paper in Arabic and Hebrew
from the Cairo Genizah, the storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat, Old Cairo, now preserved in the
Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit at Cambridge University Library also indicate that block-printing
may have been practiced by Arabs and also Jews as early as the mid-14th century. Their presence is hard to
account forin an environment so opposed to printing, but they probably represent attempts of lay
individuals to get their hands on sacred texts. They were produced by rubbing the paper on the woodblocks
and their is no evidence of links with either Europe or China, but there may be an indirect link with China
through localities such as Tabriz.
Paper money. By 960 the Song Dynasty, short of copper for striking coins, issued the first generally
circulating notes. Known as "flying money", they circulated beside metal coins. Reckless issues of paper
money led to inflation about 1100 and some notes were printed on perfumed paper in an attempt to make them
more acceptable. In 1213 moveable type was used for serial numbers and mint marks. Though the currency was
stabilised under the Mongols, paper money remained in use until the 16th century. As far west as Tabriz
there was a disastrous issue of paper money in 1294. There were riots,banks and trading were disrupted and
the practice had to be discontinued. The Italian colny there must have been aware of the precess and notes
must have reached Europe as travellers' curiosities. In 1298 the use of paper money was described by Marco
Polo, and he was not the only European in the Far East to do so. He writes: "Of this money the Khan has
made such a quantity that with it he could buy all the treasure in the world." Orders were sent out for all
gold and silver to come to the Khan's mint where vendors were paid in paper money Worn notes were exchanged
at 3% discount. But "if a man wishes to buy gold or silver to make his service of plate [...] he goes to
the Khan's mint with some of these papers and gives them in payment for the gold and silver".
Playing cards are first mentioned in 969 when they are known as "sheet dice". When they were
introduced into Europe they were known as an oriental idea. From an early period they were mass-produced
from woodblocks. Their introduction into Europe is normally attributed to contact with the Saracens during the
Crusades but the Koran forbade hames of chance and there is no record in Arab literature. The date of
introduction into Europe is uncertain; the first definite mentions are in Germany and Spain in 1377. It is
possible that the introduction of playing cards could have introduced the idea of block printing into
Europe.
Textile printing is known in Europe from as early as 542, a fragment of printed cotton at Arles in
the grave of St Caesarius, who was bishop there at that time, but it may have been imported from the East.
Textile printing is also known in Egypt at about the same date. Dated textiles are known in Japan in 734
and there are picture prints on textiles in Europe fromthe 14th century.
An independent origin in Europe cannot be ruled out. The Eastern and Western minds are similar in
many ways.
1. The use of impressed seals to verify documents - which goes back to Babylonian times.
2.Textile printing.
3. The religious impetus common to China, Egypt and Europe. The need for accurate texts of religious writings, images or charms and the attempts of a wide range of individuals, both priests and laity, to get their hands on them.
2.Textile printing.
3. The religious impetus common to China, Egypt and Europe. The need for accurate texts of religious writings, images or charms and the attempts of a wide range of individuals, both priests and laity, to get their hands on them.
This page last updated 18 October 2020
