About a Song-Dynasty (960–1276) Map Showing All of China

The paper will explore the breakthrough that the development of woodblock printing brought on the circulation of geographic knowledge in China by printing of maps. Chinese official histories inform us that cartographers in China drew precise maps of China’s territory by developing systematic methods such as the use of a grid system from the third century CE on. Unfortunately, however, no map of entire China proper from the first millennium survives. The earliest surviving maps date back to the Song period (960-1276); some of them were engraved in stone tablets, yet more maps survive by virtue of being inserted into works of wood-block printing that began to spread after the eleventh century. The paper will discuss one map, the Geographical map of China (Dong zhendan dili tu), which was included in General Records of the Founders of Buddhism (Fozu tongji). General Records of the Founders of Buddhism, a chronicle of Buddhism (590-960) following the format of Chinese official histories, was written by the Song Buddhist monk/scholar Zhi Pan, and was carved on block and printed between 1265 and 1270. Zhi Pan selected the Geographical map of China that had been already circulating in his time. This map is basically a map of China with a fairly accurate sketch of the contour of the whole of China and detailed administrative divisions in it, but it also portrays foreign places like Rum (Lumei; Asia Minor) and Baghdad (Baida) as islands in the western coast of the western sea. This concrete example as one of the earliest surviving maps of China demonstrates that Chinese geographers’ broad geographic knowledge of China and beyond received an opportunity for a wider circulation--and also for survival!-- thanks to the development of woodblock printing.