World’s Oldest Example of Printed Text Unveiled at State Library Victoria
Hyakumantō Darani with wooden pagoda, storage box and facsimile text alongside a colour woodblock print of Horyuji Temple in Nara, Japan, where this particular darani was stored.
Australia’s longest-running and most popular book exhibition, World of the Book, is celebrating its milestone 20th anniversary at State Library Victoria in Melbourne.
Two recent acquisitions are on public display for the first time in Australia, a medieval scribal knife dated to the 15th century, and the earliest recorded example of mass printed text in the world, the Hyakumantō Darani, a paper scroll produced in Japan more than 1,250 years ago.
"For the first time, the Library’s Rare Books Collection can tell the history of printed text from its origins in Asia, rather than from its European beginning," said Dr Anna Welch, Principal Collection Curator. "The history of the book is global and unites us as humans, as the Hyakumantō Darani demonstrates. It is a Buddhist Sanskrit text originating in India, printed in Japan in Chinese characters."
Other collection highlights among the 300 items to be showcased include a rare medieval manuscript made for a Medici and a set of Chinese–English phrasebooks produced in 1862 during the gold rush, a time of massive Chinese migration to Australia and particularly Victoria.
After two decades, 5000 objects, and five million visitors, World of the Book: The Rare, the Sacred and the Iconic is refreshed each year to illuminate the treasured place of books in our lives.
In celebration of the anniversary, 20 iconic items from the Library’s Rare Books Collection that were shown in the inaugural 2005 exhibition are on display again. These include the Medici manuscript, which will be turned to a different page to reveal to never-before-seen aspects to audiences, and the oldest book in Australia, De institutione musica (The Principles of Music), a seminal work on the theory of music dated to c. 1100 CE.
The oldest item in the Library’s collection, a cuneiform tablet that is close to 4000 years old, is the only object that has been on display for the life of the exhibition. Unlike light-sensitive books and paper, which cannot be permanently on display for conservation reasons, the tablet is unaffected by exhibition lighting.
Among the most contemporary showcases is one dedicated to the iconic Treehouse series created by children’s book author Andy Griffiths and illustrator Terry Denton. It features sculptures made by Andy’s family as well as fan art and international translated editions of the popular series, which have been donated to the State Collection by Andy and Jill Griffiths.
