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The Feng-tao k'o and Printing on Paper in Seventh-Century China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

T. H. Barrett
T. H. Barrett
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, London
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Extract

One of the arguments for supposing that the ‘world's earliest printed book’, the Diamond Sūtra in the Stein collection in London, is actually the outcome of a long process of development relies on the very high quality of the images contained in the frontispiece. It is possible, of course, to point to much more crudely formed Buddha images stamped on paper from the same source at Tunhuang, but the dated examples that have been studied are actually later than the Stein Diamond Sūtra itself.1 The practice of printing Buddha images on paper and silk in India is attested in 792 by the Nan-hai chi-kuei nei-fa chuan of I-ching who was in India 673–85, and Paul Pelliot for one was prepared to believe that this practice, using Chinese materials, was originally derived from China itself.2 Frustratingly enough, however, no Chinese source has so far been identified which clearly mentions printing on paper at any point earlier than I-ching's text, which itself does not antedate by more than half a century or so the earliest printed materials we actually possess, notably in the form of a dharaṇī from Korea.3

Type
Notes and Communications
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 60 , Issue 3 , October 1997 , pp. 538 - 540
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1997

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References

1 Séguy, Marie-Rose, ‘Images xylographiques conserveées dans les collections de Touen-houang de la Bibliothèque nationale’, in Soymié, Michel (ed.), Contributions aux études sur Touen-houang (Geneva and Paris: Librarie Droz, 1979), 119–133.Google Scholar

2 cf. Takakusu, J. (tr.), A record of the Buddhist religion as practised in India and the Malay Archipelago (London: Clarendon Press, 1896), 150,Google Scholar and Pelliot, Paul, Les débuts de l'imprimerie en Chine (Paris: Adrian Maisonneuve, 1953), 18.Google Scholar

3 Described e.g. in Twitchett, Denis, Printing and publishing in medieval China (London: Wynken de Worde Society, 1983), 13–14, and illustrated in pl. 1, p. [4].Google Scholar

4 Note especially p. 43 of Strickmann, Michel, ‘The seal of the law: a ritual implement and the origins of printing’, Asia Major, Third Series, vi, 2 (1993), 1–83.Google Scholar

5 Text number 1117 in the Taoist Canon in the enumeration of the Harvard-Yenching Index; text number 1125 in the more recent Schipper enumeration.

6 One of the earliest citations of this text known so far occurs in a ritual work by the early eighth-century Taoist Chang Wan-fu: see Benn, Charles, The Cavern-Mystery transmission: a Taoist ordination rite of A.D. 711 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991), 72–73, 177,Google Scholar which notes the value of the manuscripts listed in Ninji, Ōfuchi, Tonkō Dōkyō- mokuroku hen (Tokyo: Fukutake Shoten, 1978), 115–121.Google Scholar For the possible earlier citation, see Reiter, Florian C., Kategorien und Realien im Shang-ch'ing Taoismus (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1992), 11.Google Scholar

7 The controversy between Japanese scholars on this point is succinctly summarised in Benn's note, p. 177 (see preceding note); he himself follows the view of Yoshioka (see following note).

8 Thus Yoshitoyo, Yoshioka, Dōkyō to Bukkyō III (Tokyo: Kokusho kankōkai, 1979), 77–159. Pp. 161–219 provide a translation of the Feng-tao k'o itself into Japanese.Google Scholar

9 Liu Ts'un-jen (Tsun-yan), ‘San-tung feng-tao k'o-chieh i-fan, chüan ti-wu: P. 2337 chung “Chin-ming ch'i-chen” i-tz'u chih t'ui-ts'e’, Han-hsüeh yen-chiu 4.2 (December, 1986), 505–31, especially pp. 512–13 for the date, and pp. 513–20 for the character of other parts of the corpus.

10 The Feng-tao k'o seems to envisage a canon in three sections with four supplements: according to Ninji, Ōfuchi, on p. 267 of ‘The formation of the Taoist canon’, in Welch, Holmes and Seidel, Anna (ed.), Facets of Taoism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), such a canon probably came into existence during the Liang.Google Scholar

11 A complete analysis of all citations in the Wu-shang pi-yao may be found in Lagerwey, John, Wu-shang pi-yao: Somme taoiste du vte siècle (Paris: EFEO, 1981).Google ScholarMollier, Christine, Une apocalypse taoïste du ve siècle (Paris: Collège de France, 1990), 27–29,Google Scholar covers the copying under imperial auspices of the Tung-yüan shen-chou ching in 664, and the probable reasons for this, which are also explored by Ching-ch üan, Tso, ‘Tung-yüan shen-chou ching yüan-liu k'ao; chienlun T'ang-tai cheng-chih yü Tao-chiao chih kuan-hsi’, Wen-shih, 23 (November, 1984), 279–285.Google Scholar

12 Barrett, T. H., Taoism under the T'ang (London: Wellsweep, 1996), 34, citing Hsü Chien (comp.), Ch'u-hsüeh chi, 23 (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1962), 552,Google Scholar and Wang Ch'ang, Chin-shih ts'ui-pien (Sao-yeh shan-fang ed.), 71.5a–6a for Yin's life.

13 This period is treated in Taoism under the T'ang, 31–2.

14 The same scholar has already published an account of Taoist conceptions of iconography drawing on a number of sources, including the Feng-tao k'o: Reiter, Florian C., ‘The visible divinity: the sacred icon in religious Taoism’, Nachrichten der Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkund Ostasiens/Hamburg, 144 (1988), 51–70.Google Scholar

15 In the Tao-tsang edition, p.2.1a; p. 177 in the translation by Yoshioka listed above, n. 8. I am most grateful to Professor Reiter not only for showing me his work on the Feng-tao k'o in advance but in particular for drawing my attention to the structure of this list in subsequent discussion. A full English translation of the passage in question will be included in his forthcoming monograph.

16 This may readily be seen from the collation notes comparing the manuscripts with the text in the current (Ming) Taoist canon in the catalogue of Tun-huang manuscripts already cited above, n. 6.

17 Note Schipper, K. M., Index du Yunji qiqian, I (Paris: EFEO, 1981), 56, for some examples of sets of eighteen.Google Scholar

18 This aspect of his work is made perfectly plain by I-ching himself, and is picked up by at least some modern scholars, e.g. Shih-ch'iang, Ch'en, Fo-tien ching-chieh (Shanghai: Shanghai ku-chi ch'u-pan she, 1992), 911–912.Google Scholar