Jessica Gössl

From late antiquity onwards, the codex became widespread.

But the pages were generally made of animal skin parchment, rather than papyrus, which was on its way out.

In China,

Documents were traditionally written on bone, bamboo, or silk until the appearance of a new innovation.

Paper.

Paper may have been invented as early as the second century BCE.

However, it didn't become widespread until later.

Tsai Luen, a court official who lived in China in the first century CE, is often credited with inventing paper, or at least improving it significantly.

It's thought that he came up with the idea of making paper with plant and textile fibers.

This innovation made it possible to create sheets of paper cheaply and efficiently, contributing to the evolution of the book.

Another Chinese invention was woodblock printing around the 7th century.

This involved carving wooden blocks and then printing text or images on a material such as fabric or paper.

While creating the blocks was slow, painstaking work, the printing process was fairly quick.

This technique allowed books to be produced on a large scale throughout China and other parts of Asia.

Similarly to Europe, the rise of the book in China was influenced by a desire to share and preserve knowledge,

Books also became status symbols in a way, valuable objects to be collected.

But in China, there was also another factor at play, religion.

Followers of Mahayana Buddhism believed that religious texts had intrinsic value.

These books were seen as objects with sacred power, which could protect people from evil.

In addition, copying religious texts counted as a devotional act, one that could generate positive karmic results for the scribe.