Storiascopio · Era 7 of 12 · lower secondary year 1
The Diamond Sutra, oldest dated printed book
AD 868 · Dunhuang, China; now in the British Library, London
In short
The Diamond Sutra is a sacred Buddhist text printed in China with carved wooden blocks. At the end of the scroll we read that a man called Wang Jie had it printed in AD 868 to give away for free, in honour of his parents. It was found in the early 1900s in a sealed cave near Dunhuang, together with tens of thousands of other scrolls. Today it is kept in the British Library in London. It is not the very first printed text, but it is the oldest that carries a date.
Why it matters It shows that books were being printed in China almost six hundred years before Gutenberg.
Source: University of Oxford, Cabinet, “The world's earliest dated printed book: The Diamond Sutra, 868 CE”
Where we are in the era “Early Middle Ages”
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about AD 480Event 18 of 25about 1000
Your turn
Name ______________________ Class ______ Date __________
When did it happen? Find the date at the top and write it here:
Tell it in your own words: what happened?
Draw the scene below.
storiascopio.com/en/event/the-diamond-sutra-oldest-dated-printed-book/ · free worksheet, you may photocopy it for your class