VISIBLE TRACES:
Rare Books and Special Collections from The National Library of China

The National Library of China, established in 1909 and formerly known as the Beijing Library, represents the largest collection of its kind in Asia. With some 22,000,000 volumes, the collection is comprised of documents covering the entire range of the history of writing in China with works of religion, philosophy, literature, art, archaeology, medicine, and historical records of all kinds including ancient books, rubbings, and maps, in a variety of formats. Its earliest origins include the many successive imperial collections from the Song dynasty (960-1279) through the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). During the Qing dynasty, the collection was called the Capital Library (Jingshi Library) and was administered by the Board of Education, a division of the imperial administration. In addition, the collection has incorporated numerous private libraries over the centuries, making for a very rich resource.

This exhibition presents sixty-eight objects that are representative of China's continuing history of writing. The exhibition is divided into four sections: rare books and ancient writings; rubbings from a variety of carved and engraved materials; maps; and documents from China's numerous ethnic minorities.

A History of Writing
A brief examination of the history of writing in China reveals a long and rich tradition. Like hieroglyphs in Egypt and cuneiforms in Babylon, writing in China was first created over three thousand years ago. The primary difference between these early writing traditions is that the Chinese writing system has continued until today. Before the invention of paper, people in ancient China used a variety of materials to engrave, and cast or carve into including turtle plastron, ox scapula, stone, brick, bronze, tile, and silk. The earliest known forms of writing from the Shang dynasty (ca. 1600-1045 before the common era, or, b.c.e.), only discovered and understood during the last century and known as "oracle bone" inscriptions, were carved into turtle plastrons and ox scapulae.

During the Shang dynasty and Zhou dynasties (ca. 1045-256 b.c.e.) epigraphs, or inscriptions, of recorded events, ancestor commemorations, and meritorious commendations were cast into bronze ritual vessels and musical instruments in what is known as "bronze or metal writing." The First Emperor of Qin (reign 221-210 b.c.e.) traveled throughout the country and had his records inscribed in natural rock and cliff formations, rejuvenating the tradition of carving written records into natural rock and stone stele. Important texts, especially those of the Confucian classics and other important early works, were often carved into stone.

Some of the earliest "books" were created in ways that were unique to China, either on silk or on thin strips or slips of bamboo or wood. These slips were laid out in a specific order and bound together using hemp or silk threads. These slips could then be rolled up making for convenient transport and storage.

The invention of paper in China, probably during the first century c.e., or common era, was to revolutionize writing in all parts of the world. It is generally believed that the invention of paper emerged out of the practice of women cleaning natural plant fibers of silk. They were usually rinsed and bleached while placed on flat meshed nets. In 105 c.e., Cai Lun improved on this process by using a method that allowed the natural fibers to dry on the mats. In this way a paper maker could repeat the process endlessly, creating a format that was consistently uniform. Because paper was relatively easy to make and the materials were light, plentiful and inexpensive, it soon replaced all other known medium for writing including silk, bamboo slips, bronze, stone, and other materials. The earliest papers were made from hemp, but soon mulberry and bamboo were also used. Paper proved to be extremely versatile and was popular for its many attributes: tensile strength, purity and uniformity of color, and its long durability.

The carving of woodblocks for printing was invented during the Sui dynasty (581-618) and the Tang dynasty (618-907). The invention of printing in color, not in black alone, by carving a woodblock for each color was developed soon after. During the Northern Song dynasty (960-1127), paper-making, ink-making, and printing technologies had reached high levels of quality. In the tenth century, paper money was printed that utilized several color combinations including red and black or red, black, and blue. Extant woodblock-printed books from the Song dynasty have long been highly praised for the elegance of the written characters; the fine lines of the carving; the richness of the paper; and radiance of the ink. Between 1041-1048, another great development took place in the printing industry--Bi Sheng invented a movable type made of baked mud.

From the late Ming dynasty (1368-1644) through the early Qing dynasty, the printing industry experienced a great period of development. To meet popular demand there was a great range of books produced including newly-written fiction and drama; encyclopedias; collectanea related to poetry and literature; instructional books on writing and art appreciation; science, medicine, and archaeology; and reprints of many great classics. New developments related to production included cheaper paper, simpler character fonts that required less woodblock carving which in turn meant a shorter production time, as well as innovations in illustrating.

Some very sophisticated woodblock techniques for book illustrations were created including the "overlaid blocks" technique which used as many as thirty or forty woodblocks for a single illustration creating finely detailed, lifelike images in a broad range of ink tonalities and shades of color. Also a technique known as "embossed design" varied the pressure of a plain uninked woodblock when applied to the paper itself. This technique enabled the printer to create various depths on the paper, providing a three-dimensional texturing that would enhance the illustration. A great many regional bookshops and printing houses began to specialize in different types of books and became famous for their specialties.

The unique unbroken history of writing in China has undergone many changes. Over time, in order to meet the demand for more and more recorded words, the simple shapes and number of marks needed to make up a Chinese word or character became more complicated and more sophisticated. The First Emperor of Qin unified six separate states into one China. One of China's best known emperors, he created a unified monetary system, began large scale construction of the Great Wall, created the famous terra-cotta warriors for his tomb, as well as created a unified writing system. His "uniform writing policy" established small seal script as the model for the empire, replacing the six separate writing styles of the separate states, thus beginning the creation of a standardized universal writing system in all of China.

During the subsequent Han dynasties (206 b.c.e. - 221 c.e.) and the Six Dynasties (220-589 c.e.) several styles and standards were created for the writing of Chinese characters that emphasized both function, as a word or concept, as well as form, the aesthetic principles that came to be applied. The order of strokes and the balance of positive and negative or heavy and light strokes making up the character became codified. But it was really after the invention of paper that a universal system of writing began to develop. Paper provided the perfect medium in which a calligrapher could write and experiment in a great variety of styles. Many characters, which began as simple pictographs, have changed and evolved over time and the grammar and usage has changed as well creating a rich history for many of the characters that are used today. In China, writing has provided an extensive recorded body of knowledge through both official and personal documents about religion, philosophy, and literature that reflect its more than three thousand year old history.

Rare Books and Ancient Writings
The National Library of China's collection of rare books and ancient writings numbers close to 300,000 volumes. One of the earliest examples is a handscroll of a sacred Buddhist text known as the Sutra of the Lotus of the Wonderful Law (Saddharmapundarika-sutra). It was discovered in the early part of this century at the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang in Gansu province, a place considered China's greatest early repository of Buddhist texts, paintings, and sculpture. Considered one of the most important texts in the entire Buddhist canon, there are three known Chinese translations of the Lotus Sutra, originally written in India in the second century c.e. The one produced by Kumarajiva in 406 c.e., as seen in this exhibition, is still considered the finest for its eloquence and accuracy. This handscroll version, using one of China's oldest binding methods for a continuous roll (a method still in use today), is dated to 695 c.e. during the Tang dynasty and has twenty-four pages of yellow paper with 570 lines of regular script.

The Collected Works of Ouyang Xiu (Ouyang Wenzhong gong li) was printed during the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279). Ouyang Xiu (1007-1072), a statesman, historian, epigrapher, essayist, and poet was considered one of the leading cultural figures of his time. Xiu began the compilation of his poetry in 1072, while his sons continued to edit the volumes that comprised his life's work. More than a century later, in 1196, Zhou Bida (1126-1204) finished the compilation and printed the 153 volumes.

The Ten Bamboo Studio Manual on Painting (Shizhu zhai shuhua pu) dated to 1644 during the Ming dynasty and the second series of the Mustard Seed Garden Manual on Painting (Jiezi yuan hua zhuan er ji) printed in 1698 during the Qing dynasty, are both superb examples of books that utilized the highly technical developments of "overlaid blocks" and "embossed design" so
characteristic of the seventeenth century.

The Wanli period (1571-1619) of the Ming dynasty was famous for the massive outpouring of books produced, including popular fiction and compendia focused on collecting and connoisseurship. Outlaws of the Marsh from the Hall of Loyalty and Righteousness, the celebrated quasi-historical novel set during the reign of the Huizong emperor (reign 1101-26) of the Northern Song dynasty, was first printed during that time. This novel, comprised of one hundred chapters written in vernacular Chinese, depicts the 108 heroic rebel leaders of an army who robbed from the rich and fought against the powerful and tyrannical government. A work such as the Ink Garden of the Cheng Family (Cheng shi mo yuan) represented the collaboration of many talented artists and craftspeople from Anhui province, which became famous for the making of highly collectable, fancy inksticks and inkcakes with decorative press-molded designs. A book like the Ink Garden of the Cheng Family, while useful for collectors, became collectable in and of itself for the quality of its production. This multi-colored, fully illustrated text was compiled and edited by Cheng Dayue (1541 - ca. 1616), illustrated by one of the best known painters of the late Ming, Ding Yunpeng (1547 - ca. 1628), and engraved by many members of the Huang family.

Rubbings
In China there has always been a great reverence for the writings and writing styles of the past. The invention of paper provided a method to make copies of the scripts that were carved or engraved in any number of hard surfaces. The process to make a rubbing requires a sheet of paper to be set onto the carved surface after which ink is applied with a padded mallet, leaving the carved or recessed areas as white. After the paper is removed there is an exact copy that can be used for study and appreciation. Important for their artistic merit, these rubbings were often considered as valuable as original works of art by serious collectors. They were also significant didactic tools and useful for the study of social history as they often recorded extensive information about a specific time and place in China's past.

The National Library of China has some 35,000 rubbings made from "oracle bones" and 260,000 rubbings made from metal and stone. Rubbings from oracle bones, China's earliest form of writing carved into turtle plastrons and ox scapulae, provide the earliest textual information about the Shang dynasty. The elementary pictographs were assembled into simple questions used to assist shaman priests and priestesses with predicting the occurrence of natural events such as rain and drought for the primarily agrarian society.

Visible Traces has metal rubbings from excavated cast bronze vessels, musical instruments, and mirrors from the Shang and Zhou dynasties that describe recorded events, ancestor commemorations, and meritorious commendations. One example is from a common type of chime-bell of the Zhou dynasty that was originally part of a presentation set. In this case the two inscriptions, in the central and lower registers, make up a total of forty characters that provide a location and the likely name of the commissioner for which it was made.

This exhibit also has stone rubbings from extensively carved Buddhist cave chapels, historical tomb stele, memorial tablets, bricks, and tiles. Included in this exhibition is one of the "Four Exemplary Inscriptions of Longmen," from the well-known Buddhist cave-grottoes on the banks of the Yellow River near the ancient city of Luoyang. This particular important historical monument, dated to the year 498, during the Northern Wei dynasty (386-534), was commissioned by the monk Huicheng in memory of his father. This memorial is unique as only two of the more than two thousand images at Longmen are dated with the name of the patron. In addition, the stone is carved in relief making the characters in the rubbing black - in other words, the background was carved away, not in the more typical manner where the characters themselves are carved into the stone, making for white characters on a rubbing.

Maps
The National Library of China's collection of maps numbers some 30,000 and spans the history of map making in China. The earliest extant map, known as the Map of a Mausoleum, dated during the Warring States period (475-221 b.c.e.), was discovered in 1977 in Hebei province. Early maps were used as symbols of regional power and as certificates of land sovereignty. From the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 c.e.) into the Qing dynasty, policy required every state of the empire periodically to submit a map to the imperial court as a method to ensure central control

Visible Traces features the Geographic Map drawn by the imperial tutor Huang Chang (1146-1194) around the year 1193 that was subsequently carved into stone by Wang Zhiyuan (1193-1257) in 1247, from which this rubbing was made. This stone stele has a map drawn up as a didactic tool for the prince Zhao Kuo (1168-1224) just prior to his ascension to the throne as Emperor Ningzong (reign 1195-1224), to teach him about the various prefectures in the Southern Song territories and as a written reminder of the sovereign's responsibility to reunite the empire.

After the late sixteenth century a succession of Western missionaries, like Matteo Ricci, brought to China many printed books about Western scientific methods, including cartography. The introduction of Mercator maps, scales of longitude and latitude, triangulation, and other cartographic methodologies changed the course of cartography and map making in China. One example is the Coastal Map of the Seven Maritime Provinces of the Illustrious Dynasty (Shengchao qi sheng yang tu) dated to 1798, which would have been used for coastal defense during the Qing dynasty. Laid out in the handscroll format, it is beautifully drawn in ink, gold, and color while the fine particulars depict an overview map as well as very accurate detailed maps of China's entire coastline.

Texts and Illustrations from China's Ethnic Minorities
The varied peoples of China's many regions and territories from central, northern, and southern Asia over the last two millennium present a prolific and exciting body of languages and written scripts that include Kuchean, Xiongnu, Uighur, Khitan, Tangut, Dai, and so forth. The National Library of China is the largest repository for documents from these peoples. One example, written in Tangut, is the text popularly known as the Rules for Confession in the Place of the Merciful and Compassionate One (Liang huang baochan). Tangut script is a logographical, or symbolic, script of about 6,600 characters modeled on the Chinese, devised by the peoples of the Xi Xia state, which existed from 1032-1227 in the northwest of China, in present day Ningxia province. The text, attributed to the Emperor Wu of Liang (reign 502-50), was written between 483-93 and translated into the Tangut between 1049-1139. It was composed by the emperor to protect his wife during her reincarnations. The frontispiece shown here depicts the Emperor Wu conducting a repentance ceremony, a serpent (his wife) in front of the throne, and the seated Buddha on the right.

During the Qing dynasty Manchu script, comprised of some 1400 syllabic graphs created around 1599, was used alongside Chinese script for important documents. One example, the Imperial Patent of Nobility in Manchu and Chinese Scripts was a text presented to the parents of a high-ranking official for his distinguished service to the Qing empire. The scroll is handwritten in numerous colored inks on colored bands of silk brocade in vertical columns with the Manchu script read from left to right while the Chinese is read from right to left.

Exhibition Brochure Essay by Richard A. Pegg, Independent Scholar
This essay is based on curatorial information from the National Library of China. For more information, please see the essay China's Ancient Books and Records by Zhang Zhiqing, in the companion catalogue to the Visible Traces exhibit, Morning Glory Publishers, January 2000.