Buddhist Printed Images And Texts Of The Eighth-Tenth Centuries: Typologies Of Replication And Representation

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the early prints with Buddhist content and, using the Dunhuang material as a starting point, surveys the types of early Buddhist prints in order to explore aspects of their reproduction and reception. Examination of the images and texts within historical, archeological, and artistic contexts may better illuminate factors relating to the emergence of these prints and to their religious meanings and functions. A number of specific types or formats of prints can be identified among the examples from Mogao Cave 17 at Dunhuang, around which the following discussion is structured: 1) stamped images, 2) printed texts in horizontal scroll form, some of which include images, 3) printed single sheets usually with text and image. The chapter is devoted to a discussion of a subgroup of the single sheet prints, the earlier square-sheet dharani prints known from excavations of burials believed to be of the Tang dynasty. Keywords: Buddhist; dharani sheets; Dunhuang; Mogao Cave; stamped images; Tang dynasty