Chinese Engraving Made In 974 A.D. Is Owned By Widener-- Greene Found It

That the Chinese knew all about the art of printing long before Gutenburg set up type for his first bible is strikingly evidenced by the little publicized but at the same time one of the most priceless possessions of Widener--a fragment of wood-block engraving from China, designed in 974 A. D.

The specimen, one of the earliest examples of printing in the world and the only exhibit of its kind in America, is a Chinese prayer scroll, recovered from the famous Red Pagoda in Hangchow after nearly ten centuries of burial.

Given by Greene

Jerome D. Greene '96, Director of the Tercontenary and now secretary to the Corporation, discovered it in the Orient in 1931 and presented it to the University four years ago. Today it rests in the Treasure Room.

Printed on fine paper the original scroll was six feet, eight inches long, and two feet, 5-16 inches in width, but years of deterioration have reduced it to a mere fragment of three feet in length. It was remounted, when discovered, on a substantial silk cloth.

Other prized specimens of early printing date back to the Middle Ages. Widener contains more than 1,515 books, pamphlets, and papers printed in Europe before 1500, and the works of some 334 Fifteenth Century printers are represented.

Gutenberg Earliest European

Earliest exhibit is St. Thomas Acquinas's "Summa de Articulis Fidei", printed at Mainz about 1460 and attributed to Gutenberg, and along with it are several well-preserved Florentine and Venetian volumes.

An important English example is a perfect copy of Caxton's "Royal Book", dated about 1487. Noteworthy among the Spanish collectors items is the "Usatges do Barcelona e Constituciones do Catalunya", printed at Bareelona about 1495. Among the Portuguese incunabula is a Hebrew Bible, dated in Lisbon, 1490.

Hu Shih of Poking, one of the leading philosophers and men of letters in China today, has discovered that the Chinese scroll is from a collection of fragments of a Dharani Sutra, printed from wood-block in the year 974 A. D.

Hidden In Bricks

Eighty-four thousand copies of the same sutra, he says, were printed by order of Prince Ch'ien Su, of the Kingdom of Wu-yueh, and deposited in the cavities, made in the bricks user to build the pagoda on West Lake, Hangchow, which in later centuries became to be known as the Lai-Fung Pagoda. Tourists call it the Red Pagoda because of its color.

In 1924 the structure collapsed, and of the 84,000 copies of the sutra preserved in the bricks, a few hundred were found in still fairly good condition after nearly ten centuries of burial. Only a few other specimens found in Jaman and in Tun-huang are older than these.

Wood-block printing was probably generally known in China about 800 A. D., he concludes. Printing of books on a large scale and under governmental patronage was done in the tenth century. Movable types, however, were not invented until the middle of the eleventh century.