Printing

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Printing

Origins. Prior to the Tang dynasty (618-907) the Chinese used steles bearing transcripts and drawings as stamps or blocks to make reproductions of engraved pictures and well-known pieces of calligraphy. The Chinese also used rubbings and seals to produce impressions of written characters, drawings, and religious pictures. Printing developed steadily during the era of the Tang and Five Dynasties (907-960). A new technique was to print from carved woodblocks and create precise reproductions of manuscript pages from ancient texts.

Woodblock Printing. Buddhists, realizing the importance of printing for the spread of their faith, were among the first promoters of printing. The earliest printed text in the world was a Buddhist charm scroll printed in China between 704 and 751; one million copies were printed in 770 for a Japanese empress. Reproduced by woodblock printing in 868, the Buddhist Diamond Sutra, the first complete printed book in the world, consisted of six sheets of text and one sheet of illustration pasted together to form a sixteen-foot-long scroll. By that time woodblock printing had already been used in the commercial centers and densely populated cities and towns of Sichuan province and southeastern China.

Coming of Age. By the end of the Tang dynasty the government regularly printed a newspaper declaring new regulations and appointments. Printing became a prosperous industry in the Song era (960-1279) when government and private printers alike printed specimens of famous art. Printed in 953 by the Chinese National Academy, a complete 130-volume set of the Confucian classics with commentaries was the first official printed publication in the world sold to the public. By that time,

printing had come of age. Great quantities of certain works were reproduced in millions of copies. Between 972 and 983 the entire Buddhist canon, the Tripitaka of 130,000 pages, was reproduced. The set was reprinted twenty times during the Song and Yuan (1279-1368) dynasties from the original woodblocks. More than 400,000 copies of one Buddhist collection from the tenth century still survived in the late Ming period (1368-1644).

Movable Characters. The commoner Bi Sheng invented effective movable type between the years 1041 and 1048. The first mention of the invention of movable type in China appeared in 1086 in the famous scientist Shen Gua’s Dream Pool Essays, a collection of notes mostly on the history of science and technology. Since then, movable type continued to be used from time to time throughout China. A councilor of Kublai Khan’s employed it to print books of philosophy. The Mongols utilized pottery, tin, wood, and lead to make this type.

Use. By 1300 the Mongols had introduced movable wooden type to eastern Turkestan, known as Turfan. Movable type was much easier to use for the Uighur scripts of Turfan than for the Chinese language. Wang Chen perfected the use of wooden type when printing his classic, the Treatise on Agriculture, in 1313. However, owing to the difficult task of handling the huge quantity of movable type required for the most frequently used Chinese characters, woodblock printing remained the ordinary Chinese technique until the seventeenth century.

MOISTENED CLAY

Shen Kuo, a great scientist in the eleventh century, mentioned the invention of movable-type printing m his book, Dream Pool Essays (1086). He wrote:

As late as the Tang dynasty the production of books by block printing was still practiced on a limited scale. It was not until the time of the Later Tang (923-936) that the government, upon the recommendation of its prime minister Feng Tao, first sponsored the reproduction of the Five Classics by block printing. From then on practically all important books were produced by block printing.

During the Ch’ing-E period (1041-1048) a commoner named Pi Sheng first invented the movable type. Each type was made of moistened clay upon which was carved one Chinese character. The portion that formed the character was as thin as the edge of a small coin. The type was then hardened by fire and thus made permanent.

Source: Shen Kuow, “Meng-hsi Sketches,” in The Essence of Chinese Civilization, edited by Dun J. Li (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand, 1967).

Color Printing. The Chinese invented multicolor printing in the twelfth century. Paper money produced in 1107 was printed in three colors in order to prevent counterfeiting. The money had legends in black, a circle design in vermilion, and a “blue face” in indigo. Two-color printing of texts probably began when an edition of the Diamond Sutra was produced in 1340, which used black for the text and red for prayers and pictures. Four-color printing in black, gray, green, and red was also developed. In general, Chinese color-printing techniques used water instead of oily inks to create subtle effects. In the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) multicolor block printing was perfected.

Comparison. Chinese woodblock printing, to some extent, was more advanced in technique than European typography of the fifteenth century. The Chinese experience with seals and stamping and the use of special papers allowed the text being reproduced to appear reversed on the back. In addition, being a fairly inexpensive and flexible procedure, woodblock printing did not need a large capital expenditure.

Spread. Korea was the first country to which printing spread from China around the year 700. (Many old printing blocks survive today in South Korea.) Other Asian countries also learned the printing technique from the Chinese. When the Mongols occupied Central Asia, printing spread to Persia and finally to Europe. The first Persian paper money was printed following the Chinese system in Tabriz in 1294. The Persians called paper money “Jiao,” the same as the Chinese called it.

TESTING SCHOLARS

Wang Pu, an historian in the tenth century, discussed in his book the role of printing in the spread of classical learning. He wrote:

In the second month of the third year of Ch’ang-hsing (A.D. 932) the First and Second Secretariats petitioned the emperor for the printing of the Nine Classics, the test of which would be based upon inscriptions. The Department of Cultural Affairs, ordered by the emperor to be in charge of this undertaking, was to recruit professors and students to collect authentic copies based upon stone inscriptions. Each professor or student was to examine the different versions of a classic in which he specialized, and once the authentic version was determined, duplicate it by hand for as many copies as possible.

The Department of Cultural Affairs was also charged with the responsibility of hiring carvers who would make printing blocks in accordance with the adopted text based upon stone inscription. Copies of the Nine Classics, once printed, would be distributed throughout the empire. The imperial order made it clear that anyone who wished to copy any or all of the Nine Classics for his own use should copy from the authorized version which was now in printed form. He should not be allowed to use any of the unauthorized versions.

Source: Wang P’u, “The Institutions of the Five Dynasties,” in The Essence of Chinese Civilization, edited by Dun J. Li (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand, 1967).