《金刚经-说法图》
The Oldest Printed Text in the World - The Diamond Sutra
《金刚般若波罗蜜经》，是于清朝光绪二十五年（1899年）由英国考古学家奥里尔-斯坦因在甘肃敦煌石窟中发现，掠回英国，现藏于伦敦大英博物馆图书馆。
The Diamond Sutra
Hidden
for centuries in a sealed-up cave in north-west China, this copy of the
"Diamond Sutra" is the world"s earliest complete survival
of a dated printed book. It was made in AD 868. Seven strips of yellow-stained
paper were printed from carved wooden blocks and pasted together to form
a scroll over 5m long. Though written in Chinese, the text is one of the
most important sacred works of the Buddhist faith, which was founded in
India.
What's a sutra?
The word comes from Sanskrit, the ancient and sacred language of India.
It means a religious teaching or sermon, and is most often used to describe
the teachings of the Buddha. Sutras preached by the Buddha were committed
to memory by his disciples and passed down from generation to generation.
The illustration at the beginning of this "Diamond Sutra" shows
the Buddha expounding the sutra to an elderly disciple called Subhuti.
Who
was the Buddha?
The founder of Buddhism began his life in wealth and privilege. Siddhartha
Guatama was born the son of an Indian prince in 566 BC. At his birth,
a prophet declared he would become either a powerful king or a great spiritual
leader. Mindful of this prophecy, his father kept him at court, shielding
him from the harsh reality of the world by surrounding him with luxury:
silken clothes, precious jewels and beautiful women.
Then one day, when he was 29, Siddhartha was overcome by curiosity. He dressed in disguise and slipped away from the court. Beyond its walls he witnessed four sights that filled him with infinite sorrow: a decrepit old man, a diseased man, a dead man and a monk. Seeing such misery, he renounced his birthright and committed himself to a life of self-denial in order to find a way to end to human suffering. Eventually he moderated his lifestyle of total deprivation and found the "Middle Way".
Sitting beneath
a "bodhi" tree, according to tradition, he achieved a profound
understanding of the cycle of birth and rebirth by intense meditation.
Through this enlightenment, Siddhartha became the Buddha, or "Awakened
One". The Buddha preached for almost 50 years, providing his disciples
with many sutras. The recitation of sutras is an important part of Buddhist
religious observance.
How did Buddhism get to
China?
It"s assumed that Buddhism spread along the network of trade routes
between northern India and China, usually known as the Silk Road. China"s
earliest Buddhists were probably foreigners from Central Asia, but rules
for translating sacred texts from Sanskrit to Chinese were already in
place by the first century AD.
Most Chinese
Buddhists followed the Mahayana tradition, which diverged from earlier
Theravada Buddhism. Theravadan emphasis on monastic life and many hours
of meditation made it a difficult path for the craftspeople and merchants
of the Silk Road. Mahayan Buddhism interpreted the teachings of the Buddha
in a wider way that could carry more people along the road to enlightenment,
hence the name Mahayana, literally meaning "the greater ox-cart".
How did the Diamond Sutra get its name?
The sutra answers that question for itself. Towards the end of the sermon,
Subhuti asks the Buddha how the sutra should be known. He is told to call
it "The Diamond of Transcendent Wisdom" because its teaching
will cut like a diamond blade through worldly illusion to illuminate what
is real and everlasting.
The original Sanskrit title is "Vajracchedika-prajnaparamita-sutra".
Around 400 AD, the sutra was translated into Chinese, by an Indian scholar-monk
called Kumarajiva, who named it "Jin gang ban ruo luo mi jing".
What's it about?
The teachings of Buddhism are subtle and open to more than one interpretation. The "Diamond Sutra" urges devotees to cut through the illusions of reality that surround them. Names and concepts given to both concrete and abstract things are merely mental constructs that mask the true, timeless reality lying behind them.
The relatively short "Diamond Sutra" was popular because it could be memorised more easily than longer sutras and chanted in some 40 minutes. This was important because Buddhism teaches that recitation of sutras "gains merit", that is, helps towards achieving a higher incarnation.
In the"Diamond Sutra", the Buddha says: “if a good son or good daughter dedicates lifetimes as many as the sands in the River Ganges to charitable acts, and there were another person who memorized as much as one four-line verse of this scripture and taught it to others, the merit of the latter would be by far greater."
The exhibited editions are reproduced by Artist Lu Ping from Central Academy of Fine Arts, who made the woodblock with supports from Library of British Museum & China National Library.