PRINTING IN CHINA
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in the desert beyond Tun-huang, which Lao Kan subsequently dated around A.D. 98 or a little later. This confirms the date of 105 given for the announcement of the invention to the throne in the biography of Ts'ai Lun in the Hou Han shu. The technical processes included:
(a) the fashioning of seals out of metal, stone, and clay;
(b) the taking of rubbings (or inked squeezes) of inscriptions on bronze and stone.
Several bronze seals have been found in Shang sites, and many later ones made of bronze, ivory, horn, stone, pottery, jade, and iron. They were cut both in relief and in intaglio. Known as yin, the seals were generally small; their purpose was a proof of genuineness. (The woodblock, yet to appear, was large and its purpose was reduplication.)
As to inked rubbings, these make their appearance during the 5th and 6th centuries; by 649 three professionals were appointed to the T'ang court. They were called T'a shu shou. Chinese scholars love to own copies of prized inscriptions; so the making of rubbings became a popular pastime.
By the year 640, after the T'ang had consolidated the empire, and achieved victories everywhere, except in Korea, China entered upon a period of material prosperity and cultural advance. It is small wonder that in the ensuing century printing should have developed. The demand must have been very great for elementary texts, dictionaries, copies of the canon, histories, Buddhist sutras, almanacs, etc.
One must mention here the interesting hypothesis of Robert Shafer [Journal of the Oriental Society, v. 80, No. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 1960), pp. 328-329] that the printing block originated in Tibet. This may be true; but was it first used for literature, or for some other purpose, such as textiles? The authors of both the Chiu T'ang shu (196 A/la) and the Hsin T'ang shu (216 A/lb), writing of the early years of the Tang dynasty, state categorically that the Tibetans had no writing. So do the writers of the Tibetan annals, covering the years 650-747, found by Pelliot at Tunhuang. (Cf. the translation of J. Bacot and Ch. Toussaint in Documents de Touen-Houang relatifs à l'histoire du Tibet.)