A Manuscript containing Chapter 58 of the Buddhist text Zongjing lu (Zongjing Record)

This manuscript contains one chapter from a 100-chapter Chinese Buddhist text included in the Dongchan Temple edition of the Chinese Buddhist Canon. The Zongjing lu was written in the tenth century by a high-ranking Buddhist monk.

The earliest complete printed edition of the Chinese Buddhist Canon was produced, by imperial decree, in the late tenth century. Many copies, and various editions based upon it, were known not only in China but also in Japan and Korea. A second printed edition of the Canon, prepared under the guidance of the chief priests of the Dongchan Temple in Fuzhou, began to be published (in installments) in the late eleventh century. More than one-and-a-half times the length of the earlier publication, it was widely admired and became the model for future editions of the Canon through the Ming dynasty. Unlike the earlier editions, which had been mounted as handscrolls, the Dongchan Temple edition was printed on scroll-length sheets of paper that were folded accordion style. In the number of characters and lines per page, it followed the format of earlier hand-copied manuscripts.

Preparation of a printed Buddhist canon was a massive undertaking. Evidence suggests that a complete set of the Dongchan Temple edition consisted of 5,850 volumes, which may have required some 165,000 woodblocks.