The oldest securely dated printed scroll was a gift made for free distribution in 868
Printing in East Asia grew out of Buddhist belief that copying sacred words earned merit. Early printed charms were buried rather than read. The Diamond Sutra found at Dunhuang, 14 feet long and dated to 11 May 868, is the oldest woodblock scroll whose date is secure.
The method is simple in principle: carve a wooden block so that only the lines to be printed stay at the surface, ink those raised parts, and press paper or cloth on top. Cutting a block takes skill and time, but afterwards it can yield impressions in great numbers. In China it began on textiles; silk printed with flowers in three colours survives from the Han dynasty, before AD 220. By the 7th century it was in use in Tang China, and it stayed the dominant way to print books across East Asia until the 19th century.
Seals of jade, metal or stone and inscribed stone tablets probably pointed the way. Buddhism supplied the motive. Mahayana teaching treated sutras as carriers of sacred power, so reproducing them built personal merit. The earliest surviving printed fragment is a tiny Sanskrit spell scroll from a tomb in Xi'an, dated to around 650 to 670. Pieces of the Lotus Sutra recovered at Turpan in 1906, dated to the reign of Wu Zetian, are the oldest prints clearly made to be read. Aurel Stein found the Diamond Sutra in the Mogao Caves in 1907; a note at its end says Wang Jie commissioned it on behalf of his parents.
An odd tale preserved in the Book of Southern Qi concerns Gong Xuanyi, who during the 480s claimed a spirit had given him a jade block that made characters appear when he blew on paper. The historian Timothy Hugh Barrett suggests the trick was really a printing device, which would make Gong among the very first printers.
The craft soon spread. A dharani scroll on mulberry paper, found at Bulguksa in South Korea in 1966, dates from between 704 and 751. Around 770 Japan's Empress Shoutoku ordered a million copies of a charm, each housed in its own little wooden pagoda. Between 932 and 955 Chinese printers produced the Twelve Classics, and in 2009 UNESCO listed the technique as Intangible Cultural Heritage.
Source: Woodblock printing
