Hyakumanto Darani
composition: secureauthorship: traditional
A million printed Buddhist charms are produced and placed in miniature wooden pagodas as an act of merit, giving the earliest printed texts that survive with a securely documented date.
- printing at industrial scale for religious merit rather than readership
- the earliest surviving printed texts with securely documented dates
- survival in quantity because the objects were sealed in pagodas
- a technology used without its communicative consequences being pursued
After suppressing a rebellion, the empress commissioned one million small wooden pagodas, each holding a printed dharani slip, distributed among ten temples. Substantial numbers survive. Whether they were printed from wood blocks or metal plates is argued, but the date is documented and the scale is not in doubt. The point was religious merit rather than communication, which is why printing at this scale did not immediately transform the circulation of texts.
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