Yuan Dynasty Wood Block Printing

Yuan Dynasty Wood Block Printing Yuan Dynasty (Mongol Dynasty) China was a period of extraordinary history, including of course Mongol rule over the entire present-day China, intellectualism and scholarship, science and technology innovation, and then the written/print culture. The intention of this paper is to prove the importance of the invention of wood block printing in the Yuan Dynasty in relation to the spread of knowledge, specifically religious texts, poetry and literature, and in political settings. The woodblock printing tactic was not invented during the Yuan Dynasty. It is thought to have been invented during the Tang Dynasty, with the moveable woodblock invented during the Song Dynasties. However, the Yuan Dynasty, also known

Done by men of a different social class with different backgrounds, ideals, and motivations, produced under different conditions for a different audience, painting could not help but change in fundamental and farreaching ways. (Cahill 4)

This offers an indication of the importance of the woodblock print because it provided the opportunity for historians to gather and examine even peasant accounts, poems and art that offered a look into how life was during this period. Cahill also offers a series of poets and artists that were constrained by frustration so that their only acts of rebellion were to refusing to face North (Mongol capital), which he says “A corresponding symbolism is to be found in the few of their paintings that survive” (Cahill 16). A good example of this poetry is Cheng Ssu-hsiao, a yuan-era poet who used woodblock to print the date on his original copies of poems or to make copies of them entirely. One such poem offers the kind of poetry that would have been much more widely available during Yuan China thanks to the woodblock printing

One source offers: “During the reign of Emperor Chengzong of Yuan, a great many Buddhist sutras were translated from Tibetan into Mongolian, which further contributed to the development of Tibetan Buddhism in the Yuan Dynasty” (“Religion and Culture of Yuan Dynasty”