Who invented printing? Printing is one of the four great inventions in China, but many people do not know the origin of printing. In fact, the first printing is block printing, which was invented in the Tang Dynasty and widely used in the middle and late Tang Dynasty. Let's learn about the development history of printing
Who invented printing
Printing is one of the four great inventions in ancient China. It began with engraving printing in the Sui Dynasty. After the development and improvement of Bi Sheng in the song Renzong period, movable type printing came into being and was spread to Europe by the Mongols. Therefore, later generations call Bi Sheng the ancestor of printing. Chinese printing is the forerunner of modern human civilization, creating conditions for the wide dissemination and exchange of knowledge.
Before the invention of printing, the spread of culture mainly depended on hand-made books. Manual copying takes time and trouble, and it is easy to copy wrong and leak. It not only hinders the development of culture, but also brings undue losses to the dissemination of culture. Seals and stone carvings provide direct empirical enlightenment to printing. The method of ink extension on stone tablets with paper directly points out the direction for engraving printing. After the development of block printing and movable type printing, Chinese printing has offered a great gift to human development.
History of printing
1、 Seal originated in the pre Qin Dynasty. Generally, there are only a few words, indicating name, official position or organization. The printed text is engraved in reverse, which is different from Yin and Yang. Before the appearance of paper, official documents or letters were written on bamboo slips. After writing, they were tied with ropes, put sticky clay seals at the ligature, and cover the seal on the mud, which was called mud seal. Mud seal was printing on the mud, which was a means of confidentiality at that time. After the emergence of paper, the mud seal evolved into a paper seal, which was stamped at the joint of several official documents or at the seal of the official document bag. It is recorded that in the Northern Qi Dynasty (AD 550-577), someone made a large seal for official document paper stamping, much like a small carved version.
1. Printing during the Warring States period (475-221 BC).
2. Ge Hong, a famous alchemist of the Jin Dynasty (AD 284-363), mentioned in his book baopuzi that Taoism had used a large wooden seal with 120 words on a four inch square (13.5 & times; 13.5) at that time. This is already a small engraving.
3. Buddhists are also inspired. In order to make the Buddhist scriptures more vivid, they often print Buddhist statues on the head of the Buddhist scriptures. This kind of manual wood printing is much easier than hand painting.
4. The rubbings on steles have inspired the invention of block printing technology. The invention of stone carving has a long history. In the early Tang Dynasty, ten stone drums were found in Fengxiang, Shaanxi Province. They are stone carvings of the state of Qin in the spring and autumn of the 8th century BC. Qin Shihuang visited important places and carved stones seven times. After the Eastern Han Dynasty, stone tablets prevailed. In the fourth year of Emperor Ling of the Han Dynasty (AD 175), Cai Yong suggested that the imperial court set up seven Confucian classic steles in front of the Imperial College, including the book of songs, the book of history, the book of changes, the book of rites, the spring and Autumn period, the biography of Gongyang and the Analects of Confucius, with a total of 209000 words, which were engraved on 46 steles, each 175 high, 90 wide and 20 cm thick, with a capacity of 5000 words, both on the front and back. It lasted 8 years and was completely engraved. It became a classic for scholars at that time. Many people scramble to copy. Later, especially in the Wei, Jin and Six Dynasties, some people rubbed down the scriptures with paper for their own use or sale when they were lax or unattended. The results made it widely circulated.
5. Rubbing is one of the important conditions for the emergence of printing technology. The ancients found as like as two peas on the stone, a slightly moist paper, and then gently beat it with a soft hammer to make the paper fall into the concave part of the inscription. After the paper was dried, it was then put on the cloth and cotton, dipped in ink, and gently pat on the paper. This method is simpler and more reliable than manual copy. So rubbing appeared.
6. Printing and dyeing technology also has great enlightenment to block printing. Printing and dyeing is to carve patterns on wood and print them on cloth with dyes. There are two kinds of printing boards in China: convex board and hollow board. In 1972, two pieces of printed yarn unearthed from Mawangdui No. 1 Han Tomb (about 165 BC) in Changsha, Hunan Province were printed with convex plates. This technology probably predates the Qin and Han Dynasties and dates back to the Warring States period. After the invention of paper, this technology may be used in printing. As long as the cloth is changed into paper and the dye is changed into ink, the printed matter will become block printed matter. In the Dunhuang stone chamber, there are Buddhist statues printed on convex boards and hollow boards of the Tang Dynasty. The seal, rubbing and printing and dyeing technologies are inspired and integrated with each other. Coupled with the experience and wisdom of the Chinese people, block printing technology came into being.
7. Engraving printing was invented in the Tang Dynasty (around the 7th century) and was widely used in the middle and late Tang Dynasty. The early printing activities were mainly carried out among the people, and were mostly used to print Buddhist statues, sutras, vows and almanacs. At the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, Xuan Zang used Huifeng paper to print the image of Puxian and give it to monks and nuns.
8. During the Northern Song Dynasty (around the 11th century), Bi Sheng invented movable type printing, but it was not widely used, but still widely used block printing.
2、 Block printing
The process of engraving printing is roughly as follows: after the writing sample of the manuscript is written, the side with words is pasted on the board to engrave words. The engraver uses different forms of engravers to carve the reverse ink on the woodblock into raised Yangwen, and at the same time, the remaining blank parts on the woodblock are removed to make it concave. The words engraved on the board protrude about 1 ~ 2mm from the layout. Wash the carved board with hot water and remove the sawdust, and the engraving process is completed. When printing, dip the ink with a cylindrical flat bottom brush, evenly brush it on the board surface, carefully cover the paper on the board surface, gently brush the paper with a brush, and the positive image of words or pictures will be printed on the paper. Lift the paper from the printing board and dry in the shade, and the printing process is completed. A printer can print 1500 ~ 2000 sheets a day, and a printing plate can print 10000 times.
The rigid process is a bit like the process of carving seals, but there are too many words. The printing process is the opposite of the seal. The seal is printed on the top and the paper is at the bottom. The process of engraving printing is a bit like rubbing, but the words on the engraving are reverse words in Yangwen, while the words on the general stele are positive words in Yin. In addition, the rubbing ink is applied to the paper and the engraving ink is applied to the plate. It can be seen that block printing not only inherits the technology of seal, rubbing, printing and dyeing, but also has innovative technology.
Block printing was invented in the Tang Dynasty and has been widely used in the middle and late Tang Dynasty. In 1900, a beautifully printed 'Vajra Sutra' was found in the thousand Buddha cave in Dunhuang, with the words' April 15, the ninth year of Xiantong (A.D. 868) 'at the end, which is the earliest printed matter with clear date records in the world. Woodblock prints may have been popular only among the people, and there was a period of coexistence with manuscripts.
In 824, Yuan Zhen wrote a preface to Bai Juyi's poetry collection, saying: "in the past 20 years, there were no books on the walls of forbidden provinces, temples and post waiting areas, and there were no words left by princes, concubines, cowchildren and horses. As for writing molds, they are sold in the street, or they are held to make wine and tea everywhere. " Moeller is the mold carving, and holding the wine and tea is to exchange tea and wine with a printed copy of white poetry. It can be seen that by the beginning of the ninth century, the application of printing had expanded from Buddhist mantra to poetry that people like to read.
Around 835, local people in Sichuan and Northern Jiangsu had 'printed calendar days on board' and sold them on the market. At that time, some people said that the calendars printed by the people were "all over the world". It can be seen that they were not only printed in Sichuan and Jiangsu. In 883, Chengdu bookstores could see some books such as "Yin Yang miscellany, dream phase, house, nine palaces and five latitudes", and "Zishu primary school", "rate all engraving and printing paper" & hellip& hellip; In the first 200 years after the invention of printing, it has been an important medium for the popularization of culture among the people.
In 1944, it was found in the Tang tomb in Chengdu. It is a block printed matter in the late Tang Dynasty.
In the Song Dynasty, block printing had developed to its heyday, and there were many kinds of prints. Better engraving materials are mostly pear wood and jujube wood. Therefore, the idiom "disaster and pear and jujube" is used to satirize the worthless books, which means that the pear and jujube trees have been ruined in vain. It can be seen that engraving books was popular at that time.
At the beginning of block printing, there was only monochrome printing. In the fifth generation, someone added different colors to the outline of illustration ink printing with a pen to increase the visual effect. Tianjin Yangliuqing printmaking is still produced by this method. Several different pigments are printed on different parts of a board at the same time on paper to print color sheets. This method is called 'single plate multicolor printing method'. In this way, 'Huizi' (paper money issued at that time) was printed in the Song Dynasty.
Single plate multicolor printing pigments are easy to mix and penetrate, and the color block boundaries are clear, which is rigid. In practical exploration, people have found the method of plate coloring and sub printing, which is to use several printing plates of the same size to load different pigments respectively, and then print them on the same paper in several times. This method is called 'multi plate multi color printing', also known as' overprint printing ' The invention of multi edition multicolor printing was no later than the Yuan Dynasty. At that time, the Diamond Sutra note engraved on Zhongxing Road (now Jiangling County, Hubei Province) was overprinted in two colors of vermilion and ink, which is the earliest existing overprint. Multi plate multicolor printing achieved great development in the Ming Dynasty. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Nanjing and Beijing were the engraving centers. The Jingchang was established in the Ming Dynasty. The North Tibet of Yongle and the orthodox daozang were all stereotyped by the Jingchang. Both the Yingwu hall in the Qing Dynasty and the longzang in Yongzheng were stereotyped in Beijing. In the early Ming Dynasty, nanzang and many official engraved books were stereotyped in Nanjing. After Jiajing, by the middle of the 16th century, Nanjing became a color overprint center.