An introduction to the historical development of ancient printing

Printing is one of the four great inventions of Han working people in ancient China. Do you know anything about ancient printing? The following is the development of ancient printing that I compiled for you, hoping to help you.

The development of ancient printing

During the period from the first year of Renzong in the Northern Song Dynasty to eight years, namely1041-kloc-0/048, an ordinary laborer named Bi Sheng invented movable type printing.

Shen Kuo is ten years younger than Bi Sheng and is a contemporary. Moreover, the pottery movable type made by Bi Sheng was later owned by Shen Kuo's nephew. Therefore, the record that Bi Sheng invented movable type printing in Shen Kuo's Meng Qian Bi Tan is accurate and credible.

However, some Europeans once attributed the invention of movable type printing to Gutenberg. Johannes Gutenberg is from West Germany. He invented lead movable type printing, about 1440- 1448, 400 years later than Bi Sheng invented pottery movable type printing.

Movable type printing is one of the greatest inventions in human history, and it is also China's great contribution to world culture.

Like any invention, Bi Sheng invented movable type printing because of its social needs, material basis and technical conditions. China's social progress to the Northern Song Dynasty, due to economic development, commercial prosperity, and cultural prosperity, all required rapid and massive dissemination of information. Movable type printing is produced to solve the problems raised by this social demand. Printing must use paper and ink. China invented paper, oil fume and pine smoke as early as the Han Dynasty. The invention of paper and ink laid a material foundation for the birth of movable type printing. Since the Warring States, Qin and Han Dynasties, the methods of copying characters and pictures, such as seal cutting and rubbing, have provided technical conditions for the invention of movable type printing.

As the name implies, India? Print? The word itself contains two meanings: seal and printing; ? Brush? Word is the name of this rubbing and ink writing process. The naming of printing reveals its kinship with seals and rubbings. Seal and rubbings are two origins of movable type printing.

The area of the seal is very small, and only a few words such as name or rank can be accommodated. During the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Taoism rose. There is a school of Taoism that pays attention to notation. They carved long spells on peaches and dates, thus expanding the area of the seal. According to the book Bao Pu Zi written by Ge Hong in Jin Dynasty, Taoism has a copy of 120. It can be seen that I could copy a short article by stamping at that time. This is actually the pioneer of block printing.

Rubbing is another source of printing. Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty? To oust a hundred schools of thought and respect Confucianism alone? . But at that time, Confucian classics were dictated by teachers and recorded by students. Therefore, it is inevitable that different teachers will teach different classics. In the fourth year of Xi Ping, Emperor Gaozu (AD 175), the imperial court erected a monument, on which all the important Confucian classics were engraved as the standard books for correcting the scriptures. In order to avoid the labor of copying scriptures from stone carvings, people invented the method of rubbing historical sites around the 4th century. The method of rubbing on the monument is simple. After soaking a tough thin paper, apply it on the stone tablet, then cover it with a thick absorbent paper and tap it with a brush until the paper sinks into the engraved hole on the stone tablet. Then, take off the thick paper outside, pat it with cotton wool or silk cotton, dip it in ink, and brush it gently and evenly on the thin paper. When the tissue paper dries, take it off and it will be a black and white copy. This rubbing method is the same as block printing, but the difference is that the words on the inscription are concave in the yin, while the words on block printing are convex in the yang. The words on the stone tablet are written in grass. Tope provides a replication technology to obtain orthography from orthography. Later, people carved the words on the stone tablet on the board and then spread them. Du Fu, a great poet in the Tang Dynasty, once said in his poem: The monument of Yi Mountain was burned by wild fire, and the jujube was twisted. . This is similar to block printing.

In the Tang Dynasty, seal cutting and rubbing gradually developed and merged, resulting in block printing. On December 10th, 4th year of Changqing in Tang Muzong, that is, on October 2nd, 65438 in 825 AD, the poet Yuan Zhen prefaced Bai Juyi's Changqing Collection, saying that Bai Juyi and his own poems were written everywhere in Yangzhou and Yuezhou at that time? It says, it says? , sold in the street or used to make tea and wine. ? Moeller? It's being printed. This is the earliest block printing record in the existing literature. In 836 AD, Tang Wenzong, according to the report of Su Feng, the ambassador of Dongchuan, ordered the prohibition of private engraving of calendars. Su Feng said in the report:? Before the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China Tiantai invited to issue a new almanac every year, privately printed almanac had spread all over the world. ? It can be seen that there were many people engaged in block printing at that time. Among the books found in the Thousand Buddha Cave in Dunhuang County, Gansu Province on 1900, there is a volume of "Diamond Sutra" printed in block printing, and the end of the volume reads? April, 2009 15, Xian Tong, Wang Jun, made it for the parents of the second child? A line of words. Xian Tong nine years, namely in 868 AD. This is the earliest printed matter with exact date found in the world at present. This book is in the form of a piece of paper, about 1.6 feet long, and consists of seven printed sheets. In front is a picture of a door, which shows Sakyamuni talking about a tree in a lonely garden. The rest are printed in the full text of the Diamond Sutra. The graphics and text of this paper are very beautiful, and the carving technique is exquisite and simple, which shows that the printing technology at that time was quite proficient.

The origin of ancient printing

With the invention of brush and ink, scholars can not only read, but also write, without the need for an engraver to wait on them at any time as in the era of knife and pen, and it is more convenient to record ideas. Before the Spring and Autumn Period, although there were many great politicians and thinkers in China's history, no one wrote a book in person, which is the reason.

In the Qin Dynasty, Meng Tian invented the method of soaking wool with lime water to remove the water-repellent substance on the surface of wool, which helped to finalize the manufacturing technology of writing brush, and the writing brush really became a writing tool. At this point, the ancients found a way to write fluently and save time and effort, so that writing is no longer a chore. People in the leisure class will kill time by writing a few strokes in their spare time, and strive to write beautifully, and even try to laugh at each other, thus creating a precedent for calligraphy art. Li Si in Qin Dynasty was the first great calligrapher in history, which shows the maturity of pen and ink technology.

The structure of Chinese characters is complex, and everyone writes different words, some of which are beautiful and some are vulgar and ugly. An important way to promote people to pursue the art of calligraphy and improve their calligraphy skills is to imitate good calligraphy works, but people who write well generally keep accounts and their works are mostly government documents, which are difficult for ordinary people to see. Inscriptions were popular in ancient times. It is the best mode for people to practice calligraphy to find people who write well and then carve them by masons. The stone tablet is too heavy to take home and continue to imitate.

Paper appeared in the late Western Han Dynasty, but at that time, the paper fiber was rough and the ink-printing performance was poor. It is mainly used to replace cloth for wrapping and padding, and occasionally notes are written on wrapping paper, such as paper with drug names found in Hangquan (or Juyan) site. In papermaking technology, firstly, the domestic mature reeling technology is used for reference, and the fiber material is soaked in water, mashed and dispersed, and the broken fiber is taken out and spread to cool. Fiber is as thick as paper and has poor writing performance, so it has not been widely used as writing material. During the Eastern Han Dynasty and Emperor Wudi of Han Dynasty, Cai Lun reformed the paper-making method and made a new type of paper with fine, uniform and fine fibers, which greatly improved the writing performance of paper, and the main use of paper turned to writing.

The paper is thin and soft, which makes calligraphy practitioners come up with a rubbing method that imitates seals and takes them home to imitate, that is, rubbing. The invention of paper made rubbings possible, so that every calligrapher could practice good handwriting, and also created a large number of calligraphers in the Three Kingdoms and the Jin Dynasty. The western alphabet has a simple structure and a small number of letters, and it is written with a hard pen. You can write flashy, but there is no art at all. After writing dozens of letters, people can write a lot. Rubbings can be written on paper without imitating other people's handwriting. There is no need to make paper, so westerners have no social basis for inventing papermaking.

The imperial examination system, which sprouted in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, began in the Tang Dynasty. With the rise of the imperial examination system, there is a demand for spreading good articles in society. Professional copywriters copied many articles by imitating rubbings, and then combined seals with regular script to create block printing. It appeared between the prosperous Tang Dynasty and the middle Tang Dynasty, prevailed in the Northern Song Dynasty, and finally matured with the invention of clay movable type by Buyi Bi Sheng.

Up to now, there is still a saying among government civil servants:? Good handwriting, good writing? It is the two basic skills of civil servants (that is, collectors of ancient books). Writing a good hand and writing a good article are the characteristics of Chinese characters in China, which are determined by some political systems in the history of China, and come down in one continuous line with a perfect and practical writing system, which are not available in western history, thus determining that papermaking and printing can only be produced in China!

Brief introduction of ancient printing

Before the invention of printing, the spread of culture mainly depended on handwritten books. Handwriting is time-consuming and laborious, and it is prone to errors and omissions, which not only hinders the development of culture, but also brings undue losses to the spread of culture. Seals and stone carvings provide direct experience enlightenment for printing, and the method of inking stone tablets with paper directly points out the direction for block printing. The development of printing in China has gone through two stages: block printing and movable type printing, which has presented a generous gift for the development of mankind. Printing is characterized by convenience, flexibility, time-saving and labor-saving, and it is a major breakthrough in ancient printing.

Printing in China has a long history and is widely spread. It is an important part of China culture; It germinated with the birth of China culture and evolved with the development of China culture. In terms of origin, it has experienced four historical periods: origin, ancient times, modern times and contemporary times, with a development course 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 the media to record these characters. Limited by the means of production at that time, people can only use natural objects to record words and symbols. For example, Chinese characters are carved on natural materials, such as rock walls, leaves, animal bones, stones and bark. Because written materials are very expensive, only important events can be recorded briefly. Most people's experience can only be spread orally, which seriously affects the development of social culture.

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