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Image: Hongfo Pagoda woodblock B

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Description: Piece of a Western Xia (1038–1277) wooden printing block for a Buddhist text written in Tangut script. Discovered in 1990 in the Hongfo Pagoda at Helan County, Ningxia. Held at the Ningxia Museum, Yinchuan. The text of this block covers part of vol. 5 of the Tangut translation of the Shì móhēyǎn lùn 釋摩訶衍論 (attributed to Nāgārjuna, but only extant in Chinese). Each column on this woodblock has up to 11 Tangut characters, but based on a comparison of the Tangut text with the corresponding Chinese text, the length of the columns in the complete woodblock would have been twice as long, i.e. this piece represents the lower half of a complete woodblock. This is believed to be the oldest surviving text woodblock in China. Catalogue no. N12-019.
Title: Hongfo Pagoda woodblock B
Credit: Own work
Author: BabelStone
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License: CC BY-SA 3.0
License Link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0
Attribution Required?: Yes

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