The Diamond Sutra I:
The World's Earliest Dated Printed Book
Seven strips of yellow-stained paper were printed from carved wooden blocks and pasted together to form a scroll over 5m long. Though written in Chinese, the text is one of the most important sacred works of the Buddhist faith, which was founded in India.
This scroll was found in 1907 by the archaeologist Sir Marc Aurel Stein in a walled-up cave at the’ Caves of the Thousand Buddhas’, near Dunhuang, in North-West of China. It was one of a small number of printed items among many thousands of manuscripts, comprising a library which must have been sealed up in about AD 1000. Although not the earliest example of blockprinting, it is the earliest which bears an actual date. 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. 11th May, AD 868]’.
The technique of blockprinting had been known in the Far East for well over 100 years by 868, and the quality of this illustration makes it clear that the blockcutter had a considerable period of experience and skill behind him. It is not known where the printing was carried out, although Sichuan, in south-west China, is known to have been a centre of printing activity at this time.
Detail of Stein’s Third Expedition Map Showing the Area of Dunhuang. Note: This is one of the maps that will be available via the web database in mid-2000.
Dunhuang is an oasis town in Chinese Central Asia west of Chang’an (Xian), a former capital of China. The Gobi Desert lies to its northeast and the Taklamakan Desert and Tarim Basin to the west. The Silk Road coming from Chang’an split at Dunhuang to follow the northern and southern borders of the desert where the rivers and spring waters used to support sizeable towns. Between the 5th and 11th centuries Buddhist monks and devotees hewed scores of cave temples out of a cliff face a few kilometres outside the town.