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Wood-block Printing
Woodblock printing or block printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. Each page or image is created by carving a wooden block to leave only some areas and lines at the original level; it is these that are inked and show in the print, in a relief printing process. Carving the blocks is skilled and laborious work, but a large number of impressions can then be printed. As a method of printing on cloth, the earliest surviving examples from China date to before 220 AD. Woodblock printing existed in Tang China by the 7th century AD and remained the most common East Asian method of printing books and other texts, as well as images, until the 19th century. '' Ukiyo-e'' is the best-known type of Japanese woodblock art print. Most European uses of the technique for printing images on paper are covered by the art term woodcut, except for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Han Dynasty
The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) and a warring interregnum known as the ChuHan contention (206–202 BC), and it was succeeded by the Three Kingdoms period (220–280 AD). The dynasty was briefly interrupted by the Xin dynasty (9–23 AD) established by usurping regent Wang Mang, and is thus separated into two periods—the Western Han (202 BC – 9 AD) and the Eastern Han (25–220 AD). Spanning over four centuries, the Han dynasty is considered a golden age in Chinese history, and it has influenced the identity of the Chinese civilization ever since. Modern China's majority ethnic group refers to themselves as the "Han people", the Sinitic language is known as "Han language", and the written Chinese is referred to as "Han characters". The emperor was at the pinnacle of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Great Dharani Sutra
The Great Dharani Sutra () is a copy of the Uṣṇīṣa Vijaya Dhāraṇī Sūtra, a scripture of Mahayana Buddhism, which is considered to be one of the oldest printed texts in the world. Discovery The Great Dharani Sutra was discovered in October 1966 during repairs of Seokgatap (the three-storied pagoda) in Bulguksa which is located in Korea. Joseph Needham assumed it was made between 684 and 704, but since the Dhāraṇī Sūtra was translated into Chinese from Sanskrit in 704, and Bulguksa was built in 751, it is assumed that it was built between the two periods, and is considered to be one of the oldest woodblock prints (on hanji) in the world. The text contains Chinese characters of Empress Wu which were used only when the Tang Dynasty of China was ruling, so it is acknowledged to have been printed before Seokgatap was repaired. It is currently designated as National Treasure No. 126-6. In 1966, a bundle of paper known as the "ink sheet (墨書紙片)" was found. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bronze Printing Plate For An Advertisement
Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals, such as phosphorus, or metalloids such as arsenic or silicon. These additions produce a range of alloys that may be harder than copper alone, or have other useful properties, such as ultimate tensile strength, strength, ductility, or machinability. The three-age system, archaeological period in which bronze was the hardest metal in widespread use is known as the Bronze Age. The beginning of the Bronze Age in western Eurasia and India is conventionally dated to the mid-4th millennium BCE (~3500 BCE), and to the early 2nd millennium BCE in China; elsewhere it gradually spread across regions. The Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age starting from about 1300 BCE and reaching most of Eurasia by about 500 BCE, although bronze continued to be much more widely used than it is in mod ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colophon (publishing)
In publishing, a colophon () is a brief statement containing information about the publication of a book such as an "imprint" (the place of publication, the publisher, and the date of publication). A colophon may include the device (logo) of a printer or publisher. Colophons are traditionally printed at the ends of books (see History below for the origin of the word), but sometimes the same information appears elsewhere (when it may still be referred to as colophon) and many modern (post-1800) books bear this information on the title page or on the verso of the title-leaf, which is sometimes called a "biblio-page" or (when bearing copyright data) the " copyright-page". History The term ''colophon'' derives from the Late Latin ''colophōn'', from the Greek κολοφών (meaning "summit" or "finishing touch"). The term colophon was used in 1729 as the bibliographic explication at the end of the book by the English printer Samuel Palmer in his ''The General History of Printing, f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aurel Stein
Sir Marc Aurel Stein, ( hu, Stein Márk Aurél; 26 November 1862 – 26 October 1943) was a Hungarian-born British archaeologist, primarily known for his explorations and archaeological discoveries in Central Asia. He was also a professor at Indian universities. Stein was also an ethnographer, geographer, linguist and surveyor. His collection of books and manuscripts bought from Dunhuang caves is important for the study of the history of Central Asia and the art and literature of Buddhism. He wrote several volumes on his expeditions and discoveries which include ''Ancient Khotan'', ''Serindia'' and ''Innermost Asia''. Early life Stein was born to Náthán Stein and Anna Hirschler, a Jewish couple residing in Budapest in the Kingdom of Hungary. His parents and his sister retained their Jewish faith but Stein and his brother, Ernst Eduard, were baptised as Lutherans. At home the family spoke German and Hungarian, Stein attended Catholic and Lutheran gymnasiums in Budapest, w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dunhuang
Dunhuang () is a county-level city in Northwestern Gansu Province, Western China. According to the 2010 Chinese census, the city has a population of 186,027, though 2019 estimates put the city's population at about 191,800. Dunhuang was a major stop on the ancient Silk Road and is best known for the nearby Mogao Caves. Dunhuang is situated in an oasis containing Crescent Lake and Mingsha Shan (, meaning "Singing-Sand Mountain"), named after the sound of the wind whipping off the dunes, the singing sand phenomenon. Dunhuang commands a strategic position at the crossroads of the ancient Southern Silk Route and the main road leading from India via Lhasa to Mongolia and Southern Siberia, and also controls the entrance to the narrow Hexi Corridor, which leads straight to the heart of the north Chinese plains and the ancient capitals of Chang'an (today known as Xi'an) and Luoyang. Administratively, the county-level city of Dunhuang is part of the prefecture-level city of Jiuquan. H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mogao Caves
The Mogao Caves, also known as the Thousand Buddha Grottoes or Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, form a system of 500 temples southeast of the center of Dunhuang, an oasis located at a religious and cultural crossroads on the Silk Road, in Gansu province, China. The caves may also be known as the Dunhuang Caves; however, this term is also used as a collective term to include other Buddhist cave sites in and around the Dunhuang area, such as the Western Thousand Buddha Caves, Eastern Thousand Buddha Caves, Yulin Caves, and Five Temple Caves. The caves contain some of the finest examples of Buddhist art spanning a period of 1,000 years. The first caves were dug out in AD 366 as places of Buddhist meditation and worship, later the caves became a place of pilgrimage and worship, and caves continued to be built at the site until the 14th century. The Mogao Caves are the best known of the Chinese Buddhist grottoes and, along with Longmen Grottoes and Yungang Grottoes, are one of the thre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turpan
Turpan (also known as Turfan or Tulufan, , ug, تۇرپان) is a prefecture-level city located in the east of the autonomous region of Xinjiang, China. It has an area of and a population of 632,000 (2015). Geonyms The original name of the city is unknown. The form Turfan (while it is older than Turpan), was not used until the middle of the 2nd millennium CE and its use became widespread only in the post-Mongol period. Historically, many settlements in the Tarim Basin have been given a number of different names. Some of these names have also referred to more than one place: Turpan/Turfan/Tulufan is one such example. Others include Jushi/Gushi, Gaochang/Qocho/Karakhoja and Jiaohe/Yarkhoto. The center of the region has shifted a number of times, from Yar-Khoto (Jiaohe, to the west of modern Turpan) to Qocho (Gaochang, to the southeast of Turpan) and to Turpan itself. History Turpan has long been the centre of a fertile oasis (with water provided by the ''karez'' canal sy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lotus Sutra
The ''Lotus Sūtra'' ( zh, 妙法蓮華經; sa, सद्धर्मपुण्डरीकसूत्रम्, translit=Saddharma Puṇḍarīka Sūtram, lit=Sūtra on the White Lotus of the True Dharma, italic=) is one of the most influential and venerated Buddhist Mahāyāna sūtras. It is the main scripture on which the Tiantai, Tendai, Cheontae, and Nichiren schools of Buddhism were established. It is also influential for other East Asian Buddhist schools, such as Zen. According to the British Buddhologist Paul Williams, "For many Buddhists in East Asia since early times, the ''Lotus Sūtra'' contains the final teaching of Shakyamuni Buddha—complete and sufficient for salvation." The American Buddhologist Donald S. Lopez Jr. writes that the ''Lotus Sūtra'' "is arguably the most famous of all Buddhist texts," presenting "a radical re-vision of both the Buddhist path and of the person of the Buddha." Two central teachings of the ''Lotus Sūtra'' have been very i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra
The ''Longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra'' (or ''Infinite Life Sutra'', Chinese: ''Fóshuōwúliàngshòujīng'' 佛說無量壽經; Vietnamese: Phật Thuyết Kinh Vô Lượng Thọ; Japanese: Taisho Tripitaka # 360) is one of the two Indian Mahayana sutras which describe the pure land of Amitābha. Together with the ''Shorter Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra'', this text is highly influential in China and Japan where it is revered by the Jōdo-shū and Jōdo Shinshū congregations. History and translations Some scholars believe that the ''Longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra'' was compiled in the age of the Kushan Empire in the first and second centuries by an order of Mahīśāsaka monastics who flourished in the Gandhāra region.Nakamura, Hajime. ''Indian Buddhism: A Survey With Biographical Notes.'' 1999. p. 205 It is likely that the longer ''Sukhāvatīvyūha'' owed greatly to the Lokottaravāda sect as well for its compilation, and in this sūtra there are many elements in common with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
