Drop It Like It’s Art: Diamond Sutra

This section will strive to bring you short sweet facts, digestible in 30 seconds, related to all forms of art, and fun to bring up in random conversations with strangers if you’re so inclined.

It looks like China can carve another notch in its belt o’ accomplishments. Long before discovering America, the Chinese were busy perfecting printing techniques. The world’s earliest sample of a dated printed book, The Diamond Sutra, was found in 1907 in one of the caves near Dunhuang in northwest China. Sixteen feet in length, this book, published in 868 AD, is a Buddhist sermon that receives its title from the teaching within. Apparently it’s so good that it, according to translations, “will cut like a diamond blade through worldly illusion to illuminate what is real and everlasting”. That’s quite impressive as, chronologically speaking, this was long before Johannes Gutenberg was even a glint in his great great granddaddy’s eye.

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