The Diamond Sutra, printed edition of 868
composition: secureauthorship: secure
witness: the printed scroll itself, dated 868, from Dunhuang Cave 17
The earliest printed book surviving with a date on it, produced to a standard that implies decades of practice, and given away for free by a man commemorating his parents.
- a precise date and a donor's stated motive printed in the colophon
- free distribution as the purpose, rather than sale
- technical maturity implying a long prior practice
- survival owed to a sealed cave library at Dunhuang
The scroll is over five metres long, made of seven printed sheets pasted together, with a frontispiece of the Buddha teaching. Its colophon gives the exact date and states that Wang Jie had it made for free universal distribution on behalf of his parents. It was sealed with tens of thousands of other manuscripts in a cave at Dunhuang and recovered in 1900. The quality of cutting and impression shows that block printing was already mature, so this is the earliest dated example rather than the beginning of the practice.
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