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| 1. |
Write a short note how printing came to india? |
| Answer» n Buddhism, great merit is thought to accrue from copying and preserving texts. The fourth-century master listed the copying of scripture as the first of ten essential religious practices. The importance of perpetuating texts is set out with special force in the longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra which not only urges the devout to hear, learn, remember and study the text but to obtain a good copy and to preserve it. This ‘cult of the book’ led to techniques for reproducing texts in great numbers, especially the short prayers or charms known as dhāraṇīs. Stamps were carved for printing these prayers on clay tablets from at least the seventh century, the date of the oldest surviving examples. Especially popular was the Pratītyasamutpāda Gāthā, a short verse text summing up Nāgārjuna\'s philosophy of causal genesis or dependent origination. Nagarjuna lived in the early centuries of the current era and the Buddhist Creed, as the Gāthā is frequently called, was printed on clay tablets in huge numbers from the sixth century. This tradition was transmitted to China and Tibet with Buddhism. Printing text from woodblocks does not, however, seem to have been developed in India. | |