printing

                           printing

largely confined to the chung-t’ung bills, since he began his embassy to the Ilqans
sometime after 1283.
A few details on the production of ch’ao in China are reported in the
sources. According to the Yuan shih, paper money was printed by wood blocks
until 1275, when they shifted to bronze (t’ung).14 One such bronze plate has
survived, as have a very few specimens of chung-t’ung and chih-yuan bills.15
From the timing of this shift it is apparent that Bolad was probably familiar
with both methods of printing ch’ao. For our immediate purposes,
however, the more important question is how chaw was produced in Iran. In
describing the preparation of paper money, Rashıd al-Dın uses a number of
terms: Geikhatu orders “that they complete [tamum kunand] it rapidly”; amırs
are sent to Tabrız “for the issuance [ba-jihat-i ijra¨] of chaw”; and when they
arrived there the amırs “arranged for [tartıb kardand] much chaw.”16 There is,
then, in this wording no hint of the underlying technology, no reference to
“stamping,” much less to “printing.”
It is certain, however, that chaw was produced by block printing, since no
other method was possible or feasible. Moreover, Rashıd al-Dın was fully
informed about the Chinese technique. In the introduction to his History of
China he describes in detail the procedure: first, he says, they copy a page of a
book on plates (lawh-ha); second, the transfer is corrected by scholars; third,
engravers cut out the characters; fourth, each block is numbered and placed
in a bag secured with a seal; last, whenever someone desires a copy “they bring
out the plates of the book and, as [in minting] gold money, they impress the
plates on leaves of paper [awraq-i kaghaz].”17 Elsewhere in his writings Rashıd
al-Dın records that the plates are of wood and that the paper was made from
the bark of mulberry bushes.18
These passages, it deserves to be stressed, constituted, in their own day, and
for some time thereafter, the fullest and most detailed statements about the
methods of Chinese printing in any language,
includingChinese!19 Naturally,
the origin of Rashıd’s very accurate information is of interest.While in neither
case does he cite a source, we can confidently invoke Bolad once again. Not
only did he inform the Il-qan court about ch’ao, but the Chinese sources indicate
that he was an enthusiastic supporter of printing. In 1273 Bolad, as
Grand Supervisor of Agriculture, and Liu Ping-chung memorialized the
Printing 179
14 YS, ch. 93, p. 2370, and Schurmann, Economic Structure, p. 139.
15 L. Carrington Goodrich, “A Bronze Block for the Printing of Chinese Paper Currency,”
American Numismatic Society Museum Notes 4 (1950), 127–30; V. N. Kazin, “K istorii Kharakhoto,”
Trudy gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha 5 (1961), 282–83; and Rintchen, “A propos du
papier-monnaie mongol,” AOASH 4 (1954), 159 and 163. 16 Rashıd/Jahn I, p. 87.
17 Rashıd al-Dın, Die Chinageschichte, folio 393r, tafel 4, Persian text, and p. 24, German translation.
For a full English translation, taken from the history of Banakatı, Tarıkh, pp. 338–39,
who repeats Rashıd’s description word for word, see Browne, Literary History of Persia, vol.
III, pp. 102–3.
18 Rashıd al-Dın, Tanksuq-namah, pp. 36–37, and Jahn, “Some Ideas of Rashıd al-Dın on
Chinese Culture,” 145–46. 19 Tsien, in Needham, SCC, vol. V, pt. 1, pp. 306–7