A Brill Calendar: May 11

The Cave of a Thousand Buddhas

Few biographies contain as much surprise as the one of archaeologist and geographer Sir Mark Aurel Stein (Budapest, Hungary November 26 1862 – Kabul, Afghanistan October 26 1943).

His discovery of the ‘Cave of the Thousand Buddhas’ is a stunning adventure in the history of archaeology. In that subterranean world, Sir Aurel (not then knighted), found an completely forgotten wealth of artefacts and a singular document: a printed roll, sixteen feet long, completed by Wang Chieh, on May 11, 868 AD. Taken to the British Museum and studied, it proved to be the oldest printed book known. Maybe it’s not just coincidence that it mentions an exact calendar day of completion; as well as its maker’s name.

Called the ‘Diamond Sutra’, a Chinese translation from the original Sanskrit, and written more than four centuries earlier, ‘Vajracchedikan-sutra’, it is a Buddhist text; containing a dialogue between the teaching Buddha and a questioning disciple; their conversation is listened to by monks and ‘Bodhisattvas’; Buddhas-to-be. The interview deals with the illusory character of realities.

Wang Chieh printed his work during the T’ang dynasty, when this text of wisdom, imported from the Indian sub-continent of Asia, was already well assimilated in the ‘Realm of the Middle’. Edward Conze, editor and translator of the text in English, wrote in his comment: ‘printing from wooden blocks was apparently invented early in the ninth century, and this is our earliest datable wood-cut. Although it has a certain charm of its own, it is clearly an example of provincial art, and without that elegance and finish we associate with works executed in Lo-yang and other centres of T’ang culture’.

It is seldom that pre-European printing - also before the era of Gutenberg, typography and loose letters, during the days of wood-block printing - is seen in global perspective.