{"id":1908,"date":"2015-07-14T14:56:51","date_gmt":"2015-07-14T18:56:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/?p=1908"},"modified":"2015-11-17T10:15:55","modified_gmt":"2015-11-17T15:15:55","slug":"a-hyakumanto-dharani-among-the-earliest-surviving-examples-of-printed-text","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/a-hyakumanto-dharani-among-the-earliest-surviving-examples-of-printed-text\/","title":{"rendered":"A Hyakumanto Dharani – among the earliest surviving examples of printed text"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Mengge Cao and Jillian Tomm<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1968, McGill acquired a copy\u00a0of the\u00a0Hyakumanto Dh\u0101ra\u1e47\u012b\u00a0(\u767e\u842c\u5854\u9640\u7f85\u5c3c\u7d93),\u00a0one of the earliest surviving examples of printed text, along with\u00a0the miniature wooden pagoda within which it was stored more than a thousand years ago.<\/p>\n

\"rbsc_dharani-charm_japan_8th-century_pagoda_parchment_front_facing\"<\/a>

The Hyakumanto Dh\u0101ra\u1e47\u012b ( \u767e\u842c\u5854\u9640\u7f85\u5c3c\u7d93) scroll with original miniature wooden pagoda. Photo: Greg Houston<\/p><\/div>\n

A dh\u0101ra\u1e47\u012b<\/i>\u00a0<\/em>can be described as a charm used in Esoteric Buddhist rituals. It was believed that by chanting and copying a dh\u0101ra\u1e47\u012b<\/i>, an individual or a state would be protected from harm.\u00a0The Hyakumanto Dh\u0101ra\u1e47\u012b was commissioned by the Empress Shotoku of Japan during the eighth\u00a0century to appease the Buddhist clergy and honour the souls lost in a recent revolt.\u00a0According to historical sources, one million copies of this dh\u0101ra\u1e47\u012b<\/i>\u00a0were made and distributed across Japan around 770 CE.<\/p>\n

Each of the\u00a0Hyakumanto Dh\u0101ra\u1e47\u012bs\u00a0was housed in a miniature wooden pagoda, a tiered tower with multiple eaves, such as those commonly seen in\u00a0the Asian architectural tradition.The most important religious function of pagodas is to store the relics of Buddha and receive worship. The body of this pagoda is made of hinoki wood, a species of cypress,and painted with white lead. The top, or spire, is made from\u00a0cherry wood.<\/p>\n

\"rbsc_dharani-charm_japan_8th-century_pagoda_facing_cap\"<\/a>

The pagoda spire, closing the scroll within the pagoda. Photo: Greg Houston<\/p><\/div>\n

The dh\u0101ra\u1e47\u012b\u00a0<\/i>text\u00a0is printed in twenty-three\u00a0columns of five Chinese characters on a small paper scroll about six\u00a0<\/strong>centimeters\u00a0across\u00a0and forty-six\u00a0centimeters long. Based on the reported\u00a0number of copies made\u00a0and the visible features of the printed characters, there remains\u00a0debate about whether wooden blocks were used or if \u2013 more surprisingly for\u00a0that time \u2013 metal may have been used to print the characters. In either case, this\u00a0scale of production was\u00a0not seen again for centuries.<\/p>\n

\"Untitled,<\/a>

McGill’s Hyakumanto Dh\u0101ra\u1e47\u012b ( \u767e\u842c\u5854\u9640\u7f85\u5c3c\u7d93). Photo: Greg Houston<\/p><\/div>\n

The practice of printing dh\u0101ra\u1e47\u012bs<\/i>\u00a0and housing them in this way\u00a0was widespread across Northeast Asia from the eighth through the twelfth century. When McGill acquired its\u00a0copy in the 60s,\u00a0the Hyakumanto Dh\u0101ra\u1e47\u012b was believed to be the earliest surviving printed text in the world. However, similar examples have since been discovered in South Korea and some scholars have dated them to a few decades earlier, though still in the eighth century. Some one hundred\u00a0miniature pagodas containing dh\u0101ra\u1e47\u012b<\/i>\u00a0\u00a0scrolls have also been discovered in Inner Mongolia, China, dating from the early eleventh century.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0scroll and its pagoda are, as direct material links from such a distant past, truly remarkable artifacts.\u00a0There are an estimated 1,700 surviving copies of the Hyakumanto Dh\u0101ra\u1e47\u012b located in personal and public collections, most of which\u00a0are stored in the H\u014dry\u016b-ji, a Buddhist temple in Nara, Japan. North American Institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Art Institute of Chicago also hold examples.<\/p>\n

In Rare Books and Special Collections, we recently brought out the Hyakumanto Dh\u0101ra\u1e47\u012b for students of anthropology and East Asian studies to examine in a seminar given\u00a0by Professor Gwen Bennett on “The Silk Roads.” As often happens, Professor Bennett and the students helped us to learn more about items in the\u00a0collections, and graduate student Mengge Cao, whose academic interest lies in early East Asian print culture,\u00a0is now researching McGill\u2019s copy. Keep alert\u00a0for more from Mengge on this and related topics!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Mengge Cao and Jillian Tomm In 1968, McGill acquired a copy\u00a0of the\u00a0Hyakumanto Dh\u0101ra\u1e47\u012b\u00a0(\u767e\u842c\u5854\u9640\u7f85\u5c3c\u7d93),\u00a0one of the earliest surviving examples of printed text, along with\u00a0the miniature wooden pagoda within which it was stored more than a thousand years ago. A dh\u0101ra\u1e47\u012b\u00a0can … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":305,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/305"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1908"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2159,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908\/revisions\/2159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}