Woodblock Printing

Tenzin Yewong Dongchung
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of History
Brown University

The practice of woodblock printing has deep historical roots in Eurasia. It was first recorded in seventh-century Tang China (618–907),1 with kingdoms in Korea and Japan soon adopting the technique in the eighth century. By the tenth century, the technology spread from East Asia to regions of South Asia and North Africa, where the medium of prints expanded from paper to textiles. Today, the earliest known Tibetan-language xylograph is dated to the twelfth century and was produced in the Tangut Kingdom (1038–1227) (Tib: མི་ཉག་), a region located near the Silk Road on the eastern edges of what was once the Tibetan Empire. The Sino-Tibetan borderland areas, including Kham and Amdo, also saw concurrent printing activities in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Even as new technologies, including lithography and movable type, later became available in the region, woodblock printing (Tib: པར་ཤིང་) remained the most dominant and consistent mode of printing in Tibet. As Tibetan ruling institutions, including monasteries and kingdoms, grew more powerful and their influence spread across Inner Asia, including Mongolia and the lower Himalayan regions of India and Nepal, woodblock printing played a pivotal role in solidifying the foundations of these institutions. In addition to printing textual materials, such as pedagogical and liturgical texts, woodblocks were also carved with pictorial designs, as seen on prayer flags,  appliqué, and paintings. A recurring theme across many xylographs extolled woodblock printing’s capacity to produce multiple copies. It was regarded as offering “an inexhaustible (Tib: མི་ཟད་པ་) stream of Buddhist knowledge,” underscoring the cultural factors that contributed to its enduring and consistent use in Tibet.

In the fifteenth century, Tibetan-language printing saw a shift in its patronage, moving from the Tangut Xixia kings and Mongol Yuan emperors to the Tibetan kingdoms of Lato, Mangyul, and Ü. This shift was characterized by rulers collaborating with monasteries, which, in turn, projected centralized power by creating or acquiring Buddhist collections. One of the most significant developments of the fifteenth century was the Ming Yongle emperor’s (1360–1424) patronage of a copper-printed, gold-lettered Tibetan canon in Nanjing in 1410.

Theis set a powerful precedent, as, centuries later, many regional monasteries with aspirations to assert centralized authority began printing their own canons using woodblocks. An already established manuscript culture facilitated the adoption of this technology, as many of the skills required for printing processes, such as those of scribes and proofreaders, were already prevalent in the region. Thus, the presence of artisanal skills found an opportune moment in the fifteenth century, when monastic centralization and royal patronage led to the establishment of new printing houses in Central Tibet.

By the sixteenth century, all four schools of Tibetan Buddhism (Nyingma, Sakya, Kagyu, and Geluk) had established their own monasteries. As a result, sectarian competition led these monasteries to produce printed versions of their most important texts. The nature of the texts depended on a combination of what the local rulers desired and what the monasteries deemed important to systematize. However, the growth of printing houses in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries can be attributed to the rapid and massive expansion of Geluk monasteries in the previous century. The reformist doctrines of Jé Tsongkhapa (1357–1419) garnered a substantial following and attracted affluent patrons, including the ruling Pakmodrupa family. The Geluk monasteries of Sera (1419), Ganden (1409), and Drepung (1416) were founded in Ü, while Tashilhunpo (1447) was established in Tsang.

Over the course of the sixteenth century, these three Geluk monasteries expanded to the point that their administrations functioned like modern universities, with multiple colleges. Due to its emphasis on scholasticism and massive monasteries, Geluk printing houses spread most extensively in Central Tibet between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Below are two examples of painted prints from Tashilhunpo and their woodblock print versions.

In the eighteenth century, Chone,2 Nartang, and Derge each printed the entire Tibetan Buddhist canon. These projects were enormous financial and material undertakings, reflecting both the economic capacity of these sites and the growing political ambitions of each Tibetan kingdom. Despite the consistent growth of new printing houses in Central Tibet, Kham’s expansion was the most significant in the eighteenth century.

As the Manchu Qing empire (1644–1911) began to expand into new territories in Inner Asia, the region that makes up today’s Sichuan province emerged as an important frontier. Its rise as a key strategic area in the eighteenth century served as the primary impetus for its socioeconomic development. With new economic resources and a decentralized political structure composed of multiple kingdoms, the southeastern region of Kham maintained a more eclectic and non-sectarian approach to production. In addition to Geluk works, texts from the Sakya, Nyingma, and Kagyu traditions were also printed in the region between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Just as the Qing produced Tibetan-language canons in its imperial workshops in Beijing, the emperors also extended their patronage of Tibetan Buddhism towards the Northwest borderlands. Flourishing under this patronage, Geluk monasteries and new reincarnate lamas. These new monasteries, similar to those in sixteenth-century Central Tibet, were eager to establish themselves as new centers of Geluk power in the Inner Asian landscape. By the nineteenth century, Geluk monasteries in the Amdo region had become complex and powerful institutions, undertaking massive and diverse printing projects that ranged from the collected works (Tib: sungbum) of reincarnate lamas to historical, medical, and bilingual Mongolian-Tibetan texts.

While woodblock printing technology was embraced for its ability to produce fast and multiple reproductions, Tibetan Buddhist monasteries also considered the possession of woodblock collections a matter of prestige in itself. The blocks were seen as durable, knowledge-producing objects. As a result, a large portion of the printing houses was allocated to the proper storage and maintenance of the woodblocks. Today, many of these blocks, albeit individually, can be found in the collections of numerous museums in the West and, to a lesser extent, in research universities as well.

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, various European travelers, enamored by the narratives of Tibet as a forbidden land, sought to enter the country. Among the objects they collected were woodblocks, which can be found in the ethnographic collections of Swedish, French, and Danish museums. However, the scale of Tibetan material acquisition in the West was most strongly influenced by the 1903–04 Younghusband Expedition to Tibet, which led to the influx of Tibetan material culture into European museums and private collections, such as the British Library.3 Many of these public museums first emerged in the late nineteenth century and built their holdings from loot acquired during colonial enterprises. Establishing systematic institutions to categorize and represent different cultures allowed new colonial hegemonic powers to order relations among those cultures.4

American ethnographic museums as the Newark Museum, Field Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History collected Tibetan materials from the first half of the twentieth century. The growing market for Asian art and exotica, along with the popularity of Tibetan Buddhism, led to the purchase of many thangkas and Buddhist ritual objects by institutions actors such as museums and auction houses as well as individuals ranging from private collectors, Buddhist practitioners and travelers to the Himalayan regions of India, Nepal, Bhutan, and China. While woodblocks were not as popular as thangkas, ritual objects, and rare texts, art collectors and traders often bought individual pieces. Written records on the woodblock collection at the American Museum of Natural History provide the clearest insight into the museum’s interest in these objects. The sinologist Berthold Laufer (1874–1934) was sent on the Jacob H. Schiff Expedition to China to make an ethnographic record of “a sophisticated people who had not yet experienced the industrial transformation.” Today, digital collections, such as those at the American Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Ethnography in Sweden, offer the space to view objects that would otherwise remain hidden, echoing James Clifford’s view that “collections and displays [are] unfinished historical processes of travel, of crossing and recrossing.”5