EARLY CHINESE SCHOLL GIVEN TO UNIVERSITY

One of the earliest existing fragments of wood-block printing, a Chinese prayer scroll printed in 975 A.D. and recovered from the famous Red Pagoda, or Lai-fund Pagoda, at Hangchow, has been donated to the University Library of Jerome D. Green '96, director of the Tercentenary Celebration. The scroll, obtained by Mr. Greene in China in 1931, and said to be the only one of its kind of such ago in America, will be placed in the Treasure Room.

Dr. Hu Shih, of Pekin, one of the leading philosophers and men of letters in China today, said that the Harvard scroll is one of the few fragments of a Dharani Sutra, printed in 975 and deposited in the cavities made in the bricks that were used to build the Red Pagoda. When the Pagoda fall to ruin in 1924 a few copies were found still in fairly good condition despite nearly ten centuries of burial. The fragment is about three feet long, and two feet wide, or approximately one-half its original length.

This Chinese scroll is a notable addition of the University's collection. The earliest specimen of more than 1,515 books, pamphlets, and papers printed in Europe before 1500 now in possession of the University, is St. Thomas Acquinas "Summa de Articulis Fidei," printed at Mains about 1460. There are several excellent Florentine and Venetian books and a perfect copy of Caxton's "Royal Book" printed in 1487 in England. There is also a Hebrew Bible, printed in Lisbon in 1490, and several Spanish items.