East Asia and printing
It is still often attributed to Johannes Gensfleisch, said "Gutenberg", the invention of printing to the mid-fifteenth century. This opinion, deeply rooted in people's minds, is hardly shared in Asia, where the first texts reproduced by xylography (printing entire sheets with engraved plates) have been more than six centuries ago and where first impressions typographical are more than four centuries ago.
The oldest dated xylography that we have discovered in China is not prior to 868: it is the famous Diamond Sutra, found in 1907 by Aurel Stein in the Mogao caves near Dunhuang, in the confines of the Central Asia and is kept in London (British Library).
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Diamond Sutra: the oldest dated printed book. (British Library, London).
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The xylography was known in the ninth century not only in China but also Korea and Japan. In the latter, one million short Chinese Buddhist texts were printed on the order of the Empress Koken between 764 and 770 and locked in as many small stupa, out of which several hundred still exist.
When the xylography was born in China, and contrary to what had happened in the West, the paper has long been known. Actually, it is the eunuch Cai Lun at the beginning of the second century who is considered the inventor of paper and who has made it fit to receive writing. The ink used for both writing and for the xylography, it was composed of pine soot mixed with glue fish, deer horn or skin.
Plate to print "Yinzhi jinjian" (The mirror of secret determinations). The text to be printed is engraved in relief and in reverse; at the draw, the plate was inked, the paper was introduced on it and the impression was done with the help of a ball of cloth and glue wrapped in a tissue used to make wood engravings. (British Library, London).
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The texts reproduced by xylography require not only paper and ink but also uses a technique of reversed engraving.
The practice of engraving was used for reproduction of pictures and writing since antiquity, such as the xylography inherits seals impressions with the help of wooden seals. However, a supplementary stage should have been attain to achieve the xylography as we know it, which means the return of the board: while the stamp was affixed to the paper, in the xylographic printing it is the paper that is applied to the plate and pressed with the help of a ball of cloth and glue wrapped in a tissue.
Finally, starting with the twelfth century, the Chinese were the first to use movable characters, a technique which allowed them to keep an entire culture. It is the Chinese inventor Pi Ching who had been the first to use movable characters from baked clay (1041). The metal characters have emerged in 1234 in Korea and the collection of Buddhist texts, the Jik ji sim kyong (1377) would be the oldest book printed from movable metal.
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