Ink seal stamping and stone rubbing
Sello de imprenta con tinta y frotado de estelas
- Date
- c. 200 BCE · confidence low
- Place
- Chang'an (Xi'an) and Luoyang, China
- Credited to
- Qin and Han administration
- Field
- Communication
What it is
Jade or bronze seals with characters in relief or incised in reverse, which in the Qin-Han period were pressed onto clay (fengni) to close and authenticate documents on tablets; red cinnabar paste on paper becomes widespread from the Six Dynasties onward. Around the same time, paper rubbing of stone inscriptions such as the Xiping Stone Classics (175 CE) develops, though the oldest known rubbings are Tang. Direct precedents of printing.
The Xiping Stone Classics (175 CE) were systematically rubbed to obtain copies.
What it led to
- Bureaucratic authentication and the notion of the identical reproduction of a text
- Woodblock printing of Buddhist sutras (7th century) and of the Diamond Sutra (868)
- The idea of an inked reversed image that would lead to movable type
- The diffusion of canonical editions fixed by the state
Built on
- Die striking with obverse and reverse diesc. 550 BCE
- Carbon-black ink stick (India ink)c. 250 BCE
- Paper (Cai Lun's process)105 CE
- Mesopotamian cylinder seal
- Cai Lun's paper
- Chisel
Made possible
- Mugujeonggwang Great Dharani Sutrac. 704-751
- Paper money1024
- Yu ji tu grid map1136
- Bi Sheng's movable type