Introduction and Acknowledgements

Barrett, T. H.

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Introduction and Acknowledgements

T. H. Barrett

The Woman Who Discovered Printing

~This book argues that more than thirteen hundred years ago — over twice as long ago as the time of Johannes Gutenberg in Europe -China had already developed an ability to print on a massive scale. But because the most prominent supporter of this development was a woman, after her death those in authority...

Author

T. H. Barrett

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21851

Introduction and Acknowledgements

This book argues that more than thirteen hundred years ago — over twice as long ago as the time of Johannes Gutenberg in Europe — China had already developed an ability to print on a massive scale. But because the most prominent supporter of this development was a woman, after her death those in authority ignored the technology for a full two centuries. Sheer misogyny was undoubtedly a factor in this, but dynastic politics, religious rivalries, vested scribal interests, elite snobbery and even a whiff of xenophobia also all played a part to a greater or lesser degree. Above all, because Chinese scribal culture, based on paper and the ink brush, was immensely superior to the scribal culture of medieval Europe, printing simply did not have the immediate appeal that it did in the West. Far from answering a crying educational need for more books, printing in China answered a political need for more holy objects. This is such an unfamiliar idea that much of my book is taken up with explaining its background. It is not, however, my argument that the religious concepts associated with this alien (though not entirely alien) notion of holy objects made the development of printing take place more smoothly in China, even though as a way of exploring past modes of thinking I devote some space to religious metaphors concerning the transfer of patterns from one surface to another. Rather, I propose that the historically conditioned desire for more holy objects under a particular set of circumstances made printing an attractive option compared with other technologies for one particular woman, and so brought the practice to more widespread attention for the first time.

In Chapter One I first outline a case for taking Chinese printing seriously, since in much of the English-speaking world our education systems are still Eurocentric enough for many people to have grown up to assume that only Gutenberg’s form of printing is of any importance. In Chapter Two I look at some of the background features in China that helped from early times to develop an understanding of printing, though it is not until Chapter Three, when I take up the importation to China of Buddhist ideas, that the reader will encounter the religious beliefs that first inspired printing. In Chapter Four I then look at the religious environment of China in the sixth century. My argument is that it was unusually unstable as the result of a sudden climate change. But even if I am wrong, it is important to see China’s rulers not as absolute despots convinced of their own unlimited power, but as all too frail human beings who constantly needed to bolster their authority.

In Chapter Five I then turn to the ruling house of the seventh century, and to the rise to power of one of the imperial consorts who married into the family. It is this woman who is the heroine of our story. But although she is well known to historians of China, I have decided not to use the two names — Empress Wu or Wu Zetian — by which she is generally known. I have referred to her instead by using English versions of the various titles she bore at different times. I will offer some brief explanation of these as they come up in the text, but when in doubt, any capitalised title from the middle chapters onwards will probably be hers. By this means I hope to show something of the variety of public roles she played, before turning in Chapter Six to extraordinary new evidence that both shows some thing of her own private beliefs, and also strengthens the probability that she would have had a personal interest in mass printing.

In Chapter Seven the focus then shifts, away from a broad description of the intellectual and political environment that produced printing towards something much narrower. For having made a general case, I need to look closely for any evidence that she did what she was apparently minded to do. A detailed examination of the historical record here does not clinch the matter, and neither does a detailed examination in Chapter Eight of the later scraps of evidence that survive for printing in the following century or so: these chapters will certainly be hard going for any reader of history who expects a stream of effortless revelations. Unfortunately, sometimes, when there is nothing much on the record, even a quite meticulous scrutiny cannot establish firm conclusions. But these chapters do have a point in that they allow me in Chapter Nine to step back from the details and look at some broader patterns, and so at least to come up with reasonable hypotheses to explain the apparently erratic development of printing in East Asia.

I hope that these suggestions will prove of some interest, and especially that they will serve as a stimulus to further research. For I feel sure that the findings presented here cannot be taken as definitive, not simply (as I explain further on) because of the constant additions to our knowledge being made by archaeology, but also because I suspect that an even closer analysis of certain key periods may yet add significantly to our knowledge. The emergence to respectability of printing during the late ninth and early tenth centuries still deserves more detailed study, and I intend to devote further work to this phase myself. But a yet more thoroughly comprehensive and detailed examination of the late seventh and early eighth centuries, encompassing all the political and religious developments in China and within the larger Asian context, might in future clarify many of the points that have puzzled me when putting together my remarks.

Any yet more detailed investigation would, however, be unlikely to attract the substantial research funding required to support it without a clearly reasoned statement as to what evidence we have already, and how it may be construed. The purpose of the following pages is therefore to supply for the benefit of future researchers, as much as current readers, a provisional account of how the known facts may be seen in relation to each other, though of course a number of new facts have come to light in the process of writing this account. In particular my aim has been to provide a possible explanation of why the rise of printing in East Asia seems to have followed a course very different from the one it took in Europe; I intend to do this without resorting to a priori assumptions about the supposed difficulties of printing the Chinese script, since these assumptions have for far too long discouraged research into Chinese printing by unduly minimising its significance. The outcome of my own work is therefore perhaps a book very different from that which my colleagues may have expected to see, addressed as it is not solely to the select circle of specialists in the early Tang dynasty but to all who may be interested in what is, after all, an important problem in world history. For this I take full responsibility.

I absolve from any blame for the mistakes and inadequacies in my work all those who have been kind enough to offer me their financial or academic support. I’d like to thank my wife, Helen Spillett, ahead even of those who have supported me financially, for without her support and encouragement their money would have been wasted. She has read everything I have written, warning me as a result against any number of confusions and infelicities, and has also travelled with me to both the very centre and the very edge of China in search of present traces of the events and processes I describe. This book is as much hers as mine. I am most grateful, too, to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (as it then was) for supporting an extra term of sabbatical leave that allowed me to complete the longest research article underlying this study, and to the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for their generous support of further extended study leave in order to turn several years of sporadic research into the manuscript of the book that you now see before you. This arrangement would have been impossible without the co-operation of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and most especially of the then Dean of Humanities, Tom Tomlinson, and without the support of my referees, Glen Dudbridge and Chris Cullen. Constant encouragement from Robert Baldock and Malcolm Gerratt at Yale University Press has also been indispensable.

During the final stages of my research I was particularly grateful for the opportunity to discuss some of my work at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville with Miriam Levering, Hilde de Weerdt and Suzanne Wright and their students, and also at Stanford, thanks to Carl Bielefeldt, Fabrizio Pregadio and Michael Zimmerman. But the erratic progress of my studies has meant that I have accumulated debts to a number of audiences and individuals over a much longer period of time, ever since Florian Reiter first showed me the reference to printed images in his own draft translation of the Fengdao ke. A provisional stage was reached with the presentation of some findings at Wolfson College, Oxford, in February 2001, and I am grateful not simply to Glen Dudbridge for his invitation to talk on that occasion but also to Peter Kornicki and Joe McDermott for their subsequent comments on my text. So many other presentations on other occasions crowd together in my memory that it is hard to recall their exact sequence, but conferences of the United Kingdom Association for Buddhist Studies and at St John’s College, and visits to the Needham Research Institute, to the Universities of Bristol and British Columbia and the Historical Association as well as to my own department’s research seminar were all useful. Although I have tried to acknowledge specific assistance in my notes, the number of friends whose unacknowledged but still helpful remarks remain in my conscious memory — to say nothing of those whose advice I have unconsciously assimilated — now forms quite a long list, which certainly includes James Benn, Chen Jinhua, Chen Jo-shui, Chris Cullen, Ho Peng Yoke, Buzzy Teiser, Richard Salomon, Greg Schopen and Mark Strange. Charles Aylmer, Liu Yi, John Moffett and Zhou Xun were invaluable in securing useful materials for me, while in the final stages of revising my work Antonello Palumbo and Valentina Boretti both gave indispensable advice on the basis of their own unpublished researches. Their exceptional readiness to help reminds me of the great generosity of friends and teachers of earlier times — the late Antonino Forte, Piet van der Loon and Denis Twitchett, and also David McMullen, Tonami Mamoru and Stanley Weinstein, without the example of whose inspiring scholarship even this slight recompense for past kindness would have been impossible. Ultimately, of course, my debts extend to all the friends and family who have encouraged and taught me since infancy, and I am mindful that for their support and love over an even longer period I have correspondingly even less to show than to my friends and teachers in academic life. To those whom I have not seen for a while, this is what I grew up to do. I hope that there will be those who will find what I have to say worth knowing. As for the errors, misconceptions and misstatements, they are nobody’s fault but mine.

There are, finally, two ways in which my own institution has given me specific help. I am grateful to my colleagues for awarding me a grant from the funds of the Sino-British Fellowship Trust towards some of my travel in China. I would also like to express my thanks to the Director of SOAS, Professor Paul Webley, in his role as Chairman of the Management Committee of the Percival David Foundation, for agreeing to allow me to use a substantial amount of material from my contribution to the twenty-third of the Foundation’s Colloquies on Art and Archaeology in Asia in my opening chapter.

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