Sutras in Honor of Buddha: The Buddhist Impact on the Origins of Chinese Woodblock Printing

The eve of the printing revolution in the Tang China (618-907) witnessed the conjuncture of two distinct traditions: China’s long tradition of proto-printing (seal printing, stone rubbing and engraving) and Buddhism, an Indian religion that had become heavily sinicized since its adaptation in the first century AD. This transcultural crossing is particularly obvious in single-sheet Buddhist sutras. The upper half depicts a Boddhisattva, who was, according to Buddhist lore, a compassionate being who had postponed his own passage to nirvana to help others attain salvation. The imprint’s lower half shows a Buddhist formula in Sanskrit with additional explanatory notes in Chinese. Given the fact that readers of Sanskrit were an exceptionally small minority in Tang China, even among the educated elite, this combination of languages is most interesting. Who made use of these single-sheet Buddhist imprints? For which purpose?

This paper will examine the production of these Buddhist single-sheet incunabulae, their social use and how they were invested with cultural meaning. Mahayana Buddhist teachings emerging in the first century AD created powerful motives for Buddhist printing, by implicating that the multiplication of Buddhist writings would produce karmic merit. This change provided a mighty impetus for the mechanical mass-production of Buddhist texts., which different social groups in Tang society answered in various ways. Ample material resources enabled the aristocracy to engage in temple-building and Buddhist wall paintings on a grand scale, the peasantry and the urban lower classes, however, had to find other ways to accumulate karmic merit. They resorted to the inexpensive Buddhist single-sheet prints, which permitted them to fulfil their religious obligations, despite being unable to read their content. The Dunhuang imprints thereby offer a unique historical perspective allowing us to write transcultural history from below.