526 ORIENTAL ELEMENTS OB' CULTURE IN THE OCCIDENT. 



printed in Tibet during tlic rci^^'n of the Mong-ol King Poyant o Khan 

 (ll]ll-i;]l!)). It contains the account of a pious man wlio emigrated to 

 Mongolia and there l)ecame priest of the ruler mentioned above. " He 

 sent from Mongolia a larger quantity of })erquisites for the printing of 

 the bKa-'gyur and the bsTan- gyur, but particularly a small box full 

 of Chinese blacking. Tlie Lama rejoiced over it. Bloghsal of dRus 

 and others printed with the plates thus sent the bKa-'gyur and the 

 bsTan- gyur at T'ugs-k u and reconnnended the placing of these copies 

 in the Manyughosha temple at sNar-t'an._ After that the copies of the 

 Kagyur and Tan-gyur ])ecame very abundant." 



Of the further spread of i)rinting in the Occident notiiing was known 

 until a few years ago. On the other hand, it was well known that the 

 Islamic Orient for a long time opposed the introduction of the printing 

 press. Their opposition was founded on the apprehension — not offi- 

 cially acknowledged — that the hogs' l)ristles, which the Mohanmiedans 

 always suspect in the brushes used for the cleaning of the types, might 

 touch in the type the name of Allah. Even at present the Koran is 

 not being printed in the Orient, and lithography is generally given 

 the preference, and the Moslem prints ])v reason of the imperfect clean- 

 ing of the types are much inferior to those of the flesuits in Beyrout. 

 In Constantinople a printing establishment came in existence only in 

 1727 in ct)nsequence of a hatt-i-sherif of the Sultan Ahmed III." The 

 accounts of the Euclid in Arabic, supposed to have l)een printed in the 

 sixteenth century at Constantinople,'^ rests, as I have been a])le to ascer- 

 tain in the library of the Deutsche Morgenlandische (Jesellschaft, on 

 an erroneous interpretation of the statements on the last leaf of ;i folio 

 edition at Rome in 1594. 



Great, therefore, was the surprise when the Fayum iind brought to 

 light thirty Ara])ic plate prints from Egypt belonging to the tenth 

 Christian century, two of them perhaps even to the ninth c(Mitury.*' In 

 the excellent Fiihrer durch die Ausstellung (guide to th(^ exhibit) 

 Karabacek d(Hdar(\s, page 247, that "they are, as regards the cut of the 

 forms and the process of printing, perfectly identical with the Chinese.'' 

 But I must contradict him wlum he goes on to say, "Thus our col- 

 lection preserves the oldest prints in the world so far known," for, as 

 I have shown above, older Japanese prints were th(Mi known. The 



« Of the i)riiita ef this oldest Turkish press the University J^ibrarj- at Krlani^en 

 j)ossesses a dest-riptinn of America under the title of "Tarikh al-Hind al-gharbi 

 al-nnisainma bi-haditli-i-ne\v, Rama' an, 1142 A. M.," the Library of the Deutsche 

 Mor<ienl:hi(lische (icsellschaft Nascmizade's Turkish translation of Ilm 'Arabschah's 

 Tarikh-i-Timurof the same j'ear, as, also, Hadji Khalfa's Taqwiiii at-ta\varikli of 1146 

 A. II., and I personally have the Grammaire Turque of 17.30 A. D. 



''Dibbin, ^Edes Althorpiansc, vol. 1, London, 1822, p. 127: " iMiclides. Arabice. 

 Constantinop., 1588. A beautiful large copy of a very micommon edition." * * * 

 Comp. Graesse, Tr^sor, ii, p. 515. 



cComp. Osterrcichische Monatsschrift fiir den Orient, vol. UJ, ISiH), p. 167. 



