On This Day In History: ‘Diamond Sutra’ The Oldest Dated, Printed Book Is Published – On May 11, 868

AncientPages.com - On May 11, 868, the Diamond Sutra was published in northern China.

This priceless religious teaching survives as the oldest dated, printed book.

The manuscript was one of many other books of great value discovered in the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang, China.

“Diamond Sutra” – is now recognized as one of the world’s great literary jewels. Today stored in the British Museum, London, UK.

A Daoist monk, Wang Yuanlu, discovered the so-called Dunhuang manuscripts in 1900. The exact date of the composition of the Diamond Sutra in Sanskrit is uncertain.

There is a woodblock-printed copy of the Diamond Sutra in the British Library, and the extant copy is in the form of a scroll about five meters (16 ft) long.

The archaeologist Sir Marc Aurel Stein (1862 – 1943) purchased it in 1907 in the walled-up Mogao Caves near Dunhuang in northwest China from a monk guarding the caves – known as the "Caves of the Thousand Buddhas."

Sir Marc Aurel Stein was a Hungarian-born British archaeologist and explorer famous for his archaeological discoveries in Central Asia.

Fascinated by the history of the Silk Road, Stein arrived in  Dunhuang in 1907 and bought several cases loaded with paintings, embroideries, and other artifacts.

He was also able to purchase seven thousand complete manuscripts written in Chinese, Sanskrit, Sogdian, Tibetan, Runic Turki, and Uighur.

Chinese Edition of Diamant Sutra. Image credit: Maksim - CC BY-SA 3.0

Among all these ancient documents, there was also Diamond Sutra."Sutra" is a Sanskrit word meaning religious teaching or sermon.

Sutras are essential to Buddhism, a religion that developed in what is now India and spread to China hundreds of years before the 868 Diamond Sutra was printed.

The Diamond Sutra is a teaching from the Buddha himself. The book earns its name from being as short and sharp as a diamond blade, cutting through worldly illusions. It can be chanted in about 40 minutes)

The version of the book printed in 868  is a collection of seven rectangular woodblock prints pasted together to form a scroll.

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