Printing emerged as early as the 4th millennium BCE in the form of cylinder seals used by the Proto-Elamite and Sumerian civilizations to certify documents written on clay tablets. Other early forms include block seals, hammered coinage, pottery imprints, and cloth printing. Initially a method of printing patterns on cloth such as silk, woodblock printing for texts on paper originated in Tang China by the 7th century, to the spread of book production and woodblock printing in other parts of Asia such as Korea and Japan. The Chinese Buddhist Diamond Sutra, printed by woodblock on 11 May 868, is the earliest known printed book with a precise publishing date. Movable type was invented in China during the 11th century by the Song dynasty artisan Bi Sheng, but it received limited use compared to woodblock printing. However, the use of copper movable types was documented in a Song-era book from 1193, and the earliest printed paper money using movable metal type to print the identifying codes were made in 1161. The technology also spread outside China, with the oldest extant printed book using metal movable type being the Jikji, printed in Korea in 1377 during the Goryeo era.
Woodblock printing was also used in Europe until the mid-15th century. Late medieval German inventor Johannes Gutenberg created the first printing press based on previously known mechanical presses and a process for mass-producing metal type. By the end of the 15th century, his invention and widescale circulation of the Gutenberg Bible became responsible for a burgeoning economical book publishing industry spreading globally across Renaissance Europe and eventually among the colonial publishers and printers that emerged in the British American colonies. This industry enabled the communication of ideas and the sharing of knowledge on an unprecedented scale, leading to the global spread of the printing press during the early modern period. Alongside the development of text printing, new and lower-cost methods of image reproduction were developed, including lithography, screen printing and photocopying.
Stencil
Hand stencils, made by blowing pigment over a hand held against a wall, have been found in Asia and Europe dating from over 35,000 years ago, and later prehistoric dates in other continents. Stencils may have been used to colour cloth for a very long time; the technique probably reached its peak of sophistication in katazome and other techniques used on silks for clothes during the Edo period in Japan. In Europe, from about 1450 they were commonly used to colour old master prints printed in black and white, usually woodcuts.Mayor, Hyatt A., Prints and People, Metropolitan Museum of Art/Princeton, 1971, no. 51, 65, 80, This was especially the case with playing-cards, which continued to be coloured by stencil long after most other subjects for prints were left in black and white.Mayor, Hyatt A., Prints and People, Metropolitan Museum of Art/Princeton, 1971, no. 15, Stencils were used for mass publications, as the type did not have to be hand-written.
Brick stamps
Brick stamps were used by the Akkadian Empire (2334–2154 BCE) in Mesopotamia in order to dedicate the bricks used in temples, by inscribing the name of the ruler. A typical brick stamp of the ruler Naram-Sin for example would read "Naram-sin builder, the temple of Goddess Inanna". Not all the bricks of a temple would be imprinted in this way, but only several of them, enough to make clear who built the temple and for which god. The reason for using stamps was to replace the slow and cumbersome process of inscribing the bricks by hand.
In Indian Buddhism, great merit is thought to accrue from copying and preserving texts. Asanga, the 4th-century master listed the copying of scripture as the first of ten essential religious practices. The importance of perpetuating texts is set out with special force in the longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra, which urges the devout not only to hear, learn, remember and study the text but to obtain a good copy and to preserve it. This "cult of the book" led to techniques for reproducing texts in great numbers, especially the short prayers or charms known as dhāraṇīs. Stamps were carved for printing these prayers on clay tablets from at least the 7th century, the date of the oldest surviving examples.Zwalf, Buddhism: Art and Faith (London: British Museum, 1985).
Seals
In China, seals have been used since at least the Shang dynasty (. In the Western Zhou, sets of seal stamps were encased in blocks of type and used on clay moulds for casting bronzes. By the end of the 3rd century BCE, seals were also used for printing on pottery. In the Northern dynasties textual sources contain references to wooden seals with up to 120 characters.
The seals had a religious element to them. Taoists used seals as healing devices by impressing therapeutic characters onto the flesh of sick people. They were also used to stamp food, creating a talismanic character to ward off disease. The first evidence of these practices appeared under a Buddhist context in the mid-5th century. Centuries later, seals were used to create hundreds of Buddha images.
In the West the practice of sealing documents with an impressed personal or official insignia, typically from a worn signet ring, became established under the Roman Empire, and continued through the Byzantine and Holy Roman empires, into the 19th century, when a wet signature became customary.
Stone, clay and bronze blocks Stone and bronze blocks have been used to print fabric. Archaeological evidence of them has been unearthed at Mawangdui and in the tomb of the King of Nanyue, while block printed fabrics have been discovered at Mashan Zhuanchang in Jiangling, Hubei.
Pliny the Elder described clay block printing of textiles in 1st-century CE Egypt, with extant Egyptian, Roman, Byzantine, Ukrainian, and Russian examples known, dating from the 4th century CE. In the 4th century the practice of creating paper rubbings of stone carvings such as calligraphic models and texts took hold in East Asia. Among the earliest evidence of this is a stone inscription cut in mirror image from the early 6th century.
Woodblock printing
Woodblock printing, known as xylography today, was the first method of printing applied to a paper medium. It became widely used throughout East Asia both as a method for printing on textiles and later, under the influence of Buddhism, on paper. As a method of printing on cloth, the earliest surviving examples from China date to the Han dynasty (before 220 CE). Ukiyo-e is the best known type of Japanese woodblock art print. Most European uses of the technique on paper are covered by the term woodcut, except for the block books produced mainly in the 15th century.
Legendary origins According to the Book of the Southern Qi, in the 480s, a man named Gong Xuanyi () styled himself Gong the Sage and "said that a supernatural being had given him a 'jade seal jade block writing', which did not require a brush: one blew on the paper and characters formed." He then used his powers to mystify a local governor. Eventually he was dealt with by the governor's successor, who presumably executed Gong. Timothy Hugh Barrett postulates that Gong's magical jade block was actually a printing device, and Gong was one of the first printers, if not the first. The semi-mythical record of him therefore describes his usage of the printing process to deliberately bewilder onlookers and create an image of mysticism around himself.
East Asia
Inscribed seals made of metal or stone, especially jade, and inscribed stone tablets probably provided inspiration for the invention of printing. Copies of classical texts on tablets were erected in a public place in Luoyang during the Han dynasty for scholars and students to copy. The Suishu jingjizhi, the blibography of the official history of the Sui dynasty, includes several ink-squeeze rubbings, believed to have led to the early duplication of texts that inspired printing. A stone inscription cut in reverse dating from the first half of the 6th century implies that it may have been a large printing block.
The rise of printing was greatly influenced by Mahayana Buddhism. According to Mahayana beliefs, religious texts hold intrinsic value for carrying the Buddha's word, and act as talismanic objects containing sacred power capable of warding off evil spirits. By copying and preserving these texts, Buddhists could accrue personal merit. As a consequence the idea of printing and its advantages in replicating texts quickly became apparent to Buddhists. By the 7th century, they were using woodblocks to create apotropaic documents. These Buddhist texts were printed specifically as ritual items, and were not widely circulated or meant for public consumption. Instead they were buried in consecrated ground. The earliest extant example of this type of printed matter is a fragment of a dhāraṇī (Buddhist spell) miniature scroll written in Sanskrit unearthed in a tomb in Xi'an. It is called the Great spell of unsullied pure light (Wugou jingguang da tuoluoni jing ) and was printed using woodblock during the Tang dynasty, c. 650–670. Radiocarbon dating by the University of Arizona confirmed that the material was likely produced sometime between 618 and 770. A similar piece, a copy of the Lotus Sutra, was also discovered and dated to 690 to 699. This coincides with the reign of Wu Zetian, during which the Longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra, which advocates the practice of printing apotropaic and merit-making texts and images, was translated by Chinese monks. From 658 to 663, Xuanzang printed one million copies of the image of Puxian Pusa to distribute to Buddhist devotees.
Evidence of woodblock printing appeared in Korea and Japan soon afterward. The Great Dharani Sutra was discovered at Bulguksa, South Korea in 1966 and dated between 704 and 751 in the Later Silla era. The document is printed on a mulberry paper scroll.North Korea — Silla Countrystudies.us accessed 2009-12-03; A History of Writings in Japanese and Current Studies in the Field of Rare Books in Japan – 62nd IFLA General Conference, Ifla.org, accessed 009-12-03; Gutenberg and the Koreans: The Invention of Movable Metal Type Printing in Korea , Rightreading.com, 2006-09-13, accessed 2009-12-03; Cho Woo-suk, JoongAng Daily , November 22, 2004, Eng.buddhapia.com, accessed 2009-12-03; National Treasure No. 126-6 , by the Cultural Heritage Administration of South Korea (in Korean), jikimi.cha.go.kr, accessed 2009-12-28; National Treasure No. 126-6, by the Cultural Heritage Administration of South Korea (in Korean)http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/hightours/diamsutra/index.html The book was prepared in the time of Yi Zong. A dhāraṇī sutra was printed in Japan . One million copies of the sutra, along with other prayers, were ordered to be produced by Empress Shōtoku. As each copy was then stored in a tiny wooden pagoda, the copies are together known as the Hyakumantō Darani.
The oldest extant evidence of woodblock prints created for the purpose of reading are portions of the Lotus Sutra discovered at Turpan in 1906. They have been dated to the reign of Wu Zetian (690 to 705) using character form recognition. The oldest text containing a specific date of printing was discovered in the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang in 1907 by Aurel Stein. This copy of the Diamond Sutra is long and contains a colophon at the inner end, which reads: "Reverently [caused to be] made for universal free distribution by Wang Jie on behalf of his two parents on the 13th of the 4th moon of the 9th year of Xiantong"i.e., 11 May 868. It is considered the world's oldest securely-dated woodblock scroll. The Diamond Sutra was closely followed by the earliest extant printed almanac, the Qianfu sinian lishu (), dated to 877. From 932 to 955 the Twelve Classics and an assortment of other texts were printed.