block-printed books

[silk at wmich.edu]

I don't have time to go into this now, but the Tibetans did without doubt
learn wood-block printing from the Chinese, at least as early as the 12th
or 13th centuries.  The entire Kanjur was first printed from woodblocks in
Peking in 1410 (I wrote about this in the Eimer Festschrift _Suhrllekha_,
Bonn, 1996).  (I think David Jackson [Univ. Hamburg] probably knows as much
about the history of Tibetan printing as anyone, if you want to follow up
on early printed books.)  If further details are required, get back to me.
-- Madhav and Allen already clarified that in the Indian case it is stone
not wood that was used.

In great haste, Jonathan

Jonathan Silk
SILK at wmich.edu