ABSTRACT
The attractions of printed text are significant: they can be produced with relative efficiency, facilitating awide distribution, and expanding readership. Narratives of the rise of printing told from a technological perspective tend to focus on this end. In the case of China, the emphasis on technological development has often meant querying why print did not have the same impact it had in Europe.1 This focus often seems to entail the assumption that its many advantages push handwritten texts to an ever-smaller role. Indeed, this has often been the narrative suggested for the transition from manuscript to print in China, emphasizing the pivotal role of the Song dynasty in the development of print culture. In particular, imperial sponsorship of major printing projects, including the Buddhist canon during early Northern Song seems to have provided a catalyst for the expansion of print culture. Yet manuscript copies continued to play an important role in literary culture, and printed books coexisted with manuscripts far longer than has been assumed, as Joseph McDermott has argued in a recent monograph (McDermott 2006: 45 and passim). More importantly, all premodern printed matter by necessity began as a handwritten text, as amanuscript. Printedmatter, after a certain point, is favored in the texts chosen for preservation, but the readers lived in aworldwhere handwritten texts-which do not often survive-would have surrounded them. Letters, notes, poems, and first drafts are among the many forms of such handwritten texts. Moreover, texts are not generated, either by hand or by mechanized means, solely as disseminators of information; rather, the form and material of the texts carry values that may either mesh with, or diverge from, the values assigned through the content of the texts. This essay will examine the intersection of print and manuscript, of form and content, through a consideration of letters to and from the Chan monk ZhongfengMingben (1263-1323). Mingben was one of the most prominent Buddhists of his time, a monk who expressed his commitment to the tradition, both through his writings and by establishing private cloisters separate from mainstream monasteries. He was honored during his lifetime by the imperial court, and counted among his lay patrons both local elites and national figures like the statesman and literatus Zhao Mengfu(1254-1322). Some of these traits mark him as an exceptional monk, but I will not be arguing here that his practice of letter writing sets him apart. Where Mingben differs, however, is
in the role calligraphy played in his life. Not only was Mingben renowned for his talent, but also one of his chief disciples, Zhao, was the foremost calligrapher of the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368). As result, a number of Zhao’s letters to Mingben have survived, their manuscript form providing a supplementary perspective to those letters included in Mingben’s own collection of writing.
