AUTHOR: BAEGUN
DATE: 1372
Jikji is a collection of Buddhist teachings drawn together in the late fourteenth century by Master Baegun (1298–1374), a monk and chief priest of the Anguk and Shingwang temples in Haeju, a city located in what is now North Korea. Jikji is an abbreviated title of the full title of the work that may be translated as ‘Anthology of the Zen Teachings of the Great Buddhist Priests’. Consisting of teachings, hymns, eulogies and poems sourced from a number of high-ranking figures in the Buddhist world, it is an edition of the book published in 1377 (five years after Baegun finished writing it) that ensures its place within this volume. As recognized by UNESCO in 2001, the 1377 edition is the world’s oldest existing book printed with movable metal type. A full seventy-eight years before the appearance of Johannes Gutenberg’s famous printed Bible, Jikji represents the moment when the literary form commenced its evolution from being a medium of the elite to a medium of the masses.
At the time Baegun was compiling Jikji, the Goryeo dynasty controlled the Korean peninsula and under them Buddhism prospered, winning recognition as the national religion. Baegun intended that his text should be used in the education of students getting to grips with the particular demands of Zen Buddhism. When he finished working on it in 1372, it was woodblock printed – that is to say, it was printed using a method in which a wooden block is carved in relief and coated with ink to create the desired print on a piece of paper or other suitable material. This was a method that had been in widespread use in China and throughout East Asia for some time.
Whereas woodblock printing is a ‘fixed’ system in which each part of a particular text is required to be carved into a block, movable type printing is much more flexible. It uses movable components, each representing a different letter or symbol, which may be arranged in racks to compose the text to be printed and which can then be rearranged to produce different text. The racks are then inked and pressed onto the material to be printed upon. According to Shen Kuo, a scientist and statesman who lived from 1031 to 1095 under the Song dynasty in China, movable type had been invented by a man of ‘unofficial position’ called Bi Sheng around 1040 using character types crafted from a mixture of baked clay and glue. While it is difficult to be sure of such claims, China was certainly using movable type forged from bronze in the twelfth century. However, it was almost exclusively used for official documents, such as money or government papers. It was instead the Goryeo dynasty that made the early strides in using the technology for cultural production. Unlike later European counterparts, these early Korean printers did not have machinery to press the movable type onto material but instead carried out the process by hand – an extremely time-consuming job. There were undoubtedly books printed in this manner prior to Jikji but none have survived.
THE DIAMOND SUTRA
In 1900, a monk called Wang Yuanlu was out walking by the Mogao Caves (also known as the Caves of a Thousand Buddhas) in Gansu, north-west China. On his route, he found a sealed cave and inside he discovered tens of thousands of manuscripts and other artefacts. Among them was a Buddhist text, translated from Sanskrit into Chinese, that has become known as the Diamond Sutra. Running at about six thousand words, it is contained on a 15-metre-long scroll and its name derives from its full title: ‘The Diamond That Cuts Through Illusion’. Produced using the woodblock technique on 11 May 868, it is most notably the earliest known example of a printed book.
Jikji was published in two volumes, although only the second volume has come down to us. It was printed on paper using type almost 25 cm across and 17 cm down. Occasionally, lines run askew and some letters are printed in reverse or show other flaws. But that is not to decry the enormity of what it represents. The final page even includes publication details, so that we know it was published in the July of ‘the 3rd Year of King U’ (1377) at Heungdeok temple in Cheongju, in modern-day South Korea. It appeared three years after the death of its author.
As the five-centuries-old Joseon dynasty was reaching its end in Korea in 1887, a Frenchman and keen book collector named Victor Émile Marie Joseph Collin de Plancy was working as a chargé d’affaires at the French Embassy in Seoul. Jikji came into his possession (through means unknown) and was brought to the attention of the wider Western world in 1901 when a French scholar of East Asia, ethnographer Maurice Courant, included it in his bibliography of Korean works. In 1911 it was sold by the famous Parisian auction house, Hôtel Drouot, to another collector, jeweller Henri Véver, who bequeathed it to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France on his death in 1950. Twenty-two years later, Dr Park Byeong-seon, an employee of the Library specializing in East Asia, formally identified Jikji as the oldest extant volume in the world printed using movable metal type.
The book’s residency in Paris has been a subject of vexation to many Koreans, who believe their national treasure should be restored to its homeland. The authorities in France, meanwhile, claim that it represents a jewel of world culture belonging to no single country, and that the Bibliothèque Nationale is best equipped to ensure that it is maintained for future generations. In 2001, a century after its inclusion on Courant’s list, Jikji was inscribed onto UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.
While ownership of the work is likely to remain a subject of heated debate, its place in the roll-call of human achievement is secure. Reusable type signposted the way towards mass distribution and consumption of knowledge, and Jikji is its most ancient example.