Introduction to the historical development of ancient printing

Printing is one of the four great inventions of the working people of the Han nationality in ancient China. So do you know about ancient printing? The following is the development of ancient printing that I have compiled for you. I hope it can help you.

The development of ancient printing

Between the first and eighth years of Qingli reign of Emperor Renzong of the Northern Song Dynasty, that is, between 1041 and 1048 AD, an ordinary worker named Bi Sheng invented movable type printing. .

Shen Kuo is more than ten years younger than Bi Sheng and is a contemporary, and the Tao movable type made by Bi Sheng was later owned by Shen Kuo's nephew. Therefore, Shen Kuo's "Mengxi Bi Tan" about Bi Sheng's invention of movable type The records of printing are accurate and reliable.

However, some Europeans have attributed the invention of movable type printing to Gutenberg. Gutenberg was a West German. He invented lead movable type printing around 1440-1448 AD, a full 400 years later than Bi Sheng invented pottery movable type printing.

Movable type printing is one of the greatest inventions in human history and a major contribution of China to world culture.

Like any invention, Bi Sheng’s invention of movable type printing had its social needs, material basis and technical conditions. Chinese society progressed to the Northern Song Dynasty. Due to the development of the economy, the prosperity of commerce and the prosperity of culture, it was necessary to disseminate information quickly and in large quantities. Movable type printing was created to solve the problems raised by this social need. Printing requires paper and ink. China invented paper and two inks, oil smoke and pine smoke, as early as the Han Dynasty. The invention of paper and ink laid the material foundation for the birth of movable type printing. The methods of copying text and pictures such as seals and rubbings that appeared since the Warring States, Qin and Han Dynasties provided technical conditions for the invention of movable type printing.

As the name suggests, the word "print" in printing itself contains two meanings: seal and printing; the word "brush" is the name of the process of rubbing monuments and applying ink. The naming of printing has revealed its kinship with seals and rubbings. Seals and rubbings are the two origins of movable type printing.

The area of ??the seal is originally very small and can only accommodate a few words such as name or title. During the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Taoism emerged. One sect of Taoism pays attention to talismans. They carved longer spells on peach and jujube wood, thereby enlarging the area of ??the seal. According to the book "Baopuzi" written by Ge Hong of the Jin Dynasty, there is a Taoist copy engraved with 120 characters. It can be seen that at that time, it was possible to copy a short article by stamping. This was actually the forerunner of engraving.

Tablet rubbing is another origin of printing. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty deposed hundreds of schools of thought and only respected Confucianism. But at that time, Confucian classics were all dictated by classics teachers and written down by students. Therefore, it is inevitable that there will be differences when different classics are taught by different scribes. In the fourth year of Emperor Xiping of the Han Dynasty (AD 175), the government erected a stone and engraved all important Confucian classics on it as the standard version for correcting the classics. In order to avoid the labor of copying scriptures from stone carvings, people invented the method of rubbing tablets around the 4th century AD. The method of rubbing a monument is very simple. Wet a piece of tough tissue paper and apply it on the stele, then cover it with a piece of thick absorbent paper, tap it gently with a brush until the paper sinks into the cavity of the stele, and then peel off the outer thick paper. , use a cotton or silk bat, dip it in ink, and gently and evenly brush it onto the tissue paper. When the tissue paper is dry, peel it off, and you will have a rubbing with white characters and black ground. This method of engraving a stele is the same as engraving printing. The difference is that the characters on the stele are in concave inscriptions, while the characters in engraving printing are in convex embossed characters. The text on the stele is written in Yin script. Rubbing tablets provide a copying technology for obtaining orthographic characters from the orthographic characters of Yin script. Later, people engraved the text on the stone tablet on the wooden board, and then spread it. Du Fu, a great poet of the Tang Dynasty, once said in his poem: "The monument on Mount Yi was burned by wildfire, and the carvings on the jujube wood were distorted." This is almost the same as engraving and printing.

In the Tang Dynasty, the two methods of sealing and engraving tablets gradually developed and merged, and engraving printing appeared. On December 10, the fourth year of Changqing reign of Muzong of the Tang Dynasty, that is, January 2, 825 AD, the poet Yuan Zhen wrote a preface to Bai Juyi's "Changqing Collection". He said that at that time, people everywhere in Yangzhou and Yuezhou regarded Bai Juyi and himself as The poems written in this book are sold on the street or exchanged for tea and wine.

"Moule" means engraving. This is the earliest record of woodblock printing in existing documents. In 836 AD, Emperor Wenzong of the Tang Dynasty, based on the report of Feng Su, the governor of Dongchuan, issued an order prohibiting all private calendars. Feng Su said in his report: "Every year before the Central Office's Tiantai petitions for the promulgation of a new almanac, privately printed almanacs are already flying all over the world. ?It can be seen that there were many people engaged in the engraving and printing industry among the people at that time. In 1900, a collection of books found in Thousand Buddha Cave in Dunhuang County, Gansu Province contained a volume of the Diamond Sutra printed on carved boards. The end of the book contained the inscription: "On April 15, the ninth year of Xiantong, Wang Jie created it for his two relatives." The ninth year of Xiantong, that is, 868 AD. This is the earliest printed matter with an exact date found in the world. The book is in the form of a scroll, about 1.6 feet long, and is made up of seven printed sheets. At the front is a door painting, which depicts the scene of Sakyamuni preaching sermons to the Solitude Garden in Jishu. The rest printed is the full text of the Diamond Sutra. The pictures and text in this volume are very exquisite, and the carving technique is delicate and simple, which shows that the printing and printing technology at that time had reached a very sophisticated level.

The origin of ancient printing

The invention of the brush and ink enabled scholars to not only read but also write. They did not need an engraver to be on hand like in the era of swords and pens, and it was more convenient to record. own thoughts. Before the Spring and Autumn Period, although there were many great politicians and great thinkers in Chinese history, none of them wrote books personally. This is the reason.

During the Qin Dynasty, Mengtian invented a method of soaking hair in lime water to remove the water-repellent substances on the surface of the hair, which helped finalize the production technology of the brush, and the brush truly became a writing tool. So far, the ancients have found a way to write fluently, save time and effort, so that writing is no longer a chore. People in the leisure class will write a few strokes in their spare time to kill time, and strive to write beautifully. They even competed with each other for a laugh, thus creating a precedent for the art of calligraphy. Li Si of the Qin Dynasty was the first great calligrapher in history, which illustrates the maturity of pen and ink technology.

The structure of Chinese characters is complex, and everyone writes different characters. Some are beautiful and beautiful, while others are vulgar and ugly, which encourages people to pursue the art of calligraphy. An important way to improve calligraphy skills is to imitate good calligraphy works. However, people who write well are usually scribes, and most of their works are government documents, which are difficult for ordinary people to see. In ancient times, inscriptions on stone tablets were popular. Someone who was good at writing would write the inscriptions and then have the stonemason carve them out. This was the best model for people to practice writing. The stele is too bulky to be taken home and imitated.

Paper appeared in the late Western Han Dynasty, but the paper fiber at that time was rough and had poor inkability. It was mainly used as a wrapper and cushion instead of cloth. There was also the phenomenon of occasionally writing on the wrapping paper to note things, such as Papers with names of medicines were found at the Xuanquan (or Juyan) site. Papermaking technology first draws on China's already mature silk reeling technology. The fiber material is soaked in water and mashed to disperse the fiber. The broken fiber is taken out and spread to cool. The fiber is thick, the paper is thick, and the writing performance is poor. It is not widely used. Writing materials. Cai Lun of the Eastern Han Dynasty and the Imperial Dynasty reformed the papermaking method and produced a new type of paper that was thin, uniform, and fine-fibered. This greatly improved the writing performance of paper, and the main use of paper was shifted to writing.

The paper is thin and soft, so calligraphy practitioners came up with a method of imitating seals, seals and rubbings of inscriptions, and took them home to imitate, which is the rubbing method. The invention of paper made rubbings possible and enabled every scribe to develop good handwriting. It also led to the emergence of a large number of calligraphers in the Three Kingdoms and Jin Dynasties. The Western alphabet has a simple text structure, a small number of letters, and is written with a hard pen. It can be written very fancyly, but there is no art at all. After people have written dozens of letters, they can write in large quantities. There is no need for rubbings to imitate other people's handwriting. As long as the paper can be written, there is no need for papermaking technology, so Westerners have no social basis for inventing papermaking technology.

The imperial examination system sprouted in the Northern and Southern Dynasties and began in the Tang Dynasty. With the rise of the imperial examination system, the requirement to spread good articles appeared in society again. In order to copy good articles in large quantities, professional copyists imitated Rubbing technology was used for large-scale copying, and later combined with seal calligraphy and reverse calligraphy, woodblock printing was created.

It appeared around the period from the prosperous Tang Dynasty to the mid-Tang Dynasty, became popular in the Northern Song Dynasty, and finally matured with the invention of clay movable type by Buyi Bi Sheng.

To this day, there is still a saying among government civil servants: Good calligraphy and good articles are the two basic skills of civil servants (i.e., ancient scribes). Writing good calligraphy and writing good articles are the characteristics of Chinese characters. They are determined by certain political systems in Chinese history and are in line with the perfect and practical writing system. All of these are not found in Western history, thus determining the art of papermaking. And printing can only be produced in China!

Introduction to ancient printing

Before the invention of printing, the spread of culture mainly relied on handwritten books. Copying by hand is time-consuming and labor-intensive, and it is easy to make mistakes and omissions. It not only hinders the development of culture, but also brings undue losses to the spread of culture. Seals and stone carvings provided direct empirical inspiration for printing. The method of using paper and ink rubbing on stone tablets directly pointed out the direction for engraving printing. China's printing technology has developed through two stages: block printing and movable type printing, which has presented a great gift to the development of mankind. Printing is characterized by convenience, flexibility, time saving, and labor saving. It is a major breakthrough in ancient printing.

China’s printing technology has a long history and spreads far and wide. It is an important component of Han culture; it sprouted with the birth of Han culture and evolved with the development of Han culture. If we count from its origin, it has gone through four historical periods: origin, ancient times, modern times, and contemporary times, a development process of more than 5,000 years. In the early days, in order to record events and spread experience and knowledge, the Han people created early written symbols and sought a medium to record these characters. Due to the limitations of the production methods at that time, people could only use natural objects to record written symbols. For example, carve and write words on rock walls, leaves, animal bones, stones, bark and other natural materials. Since the materials for recording texts are very expensive, only important events can be briefly recorded. Most people's experiences can only be transmitted orally, which seriously affects the development of social culture.