Impressions and Wish-Fulfillments

It is generally concided that printing was first developed in China (206 B.C.-A.D. 220).

The oldest extant examples of printing, however, are Japanese. They are a group of Buddhist charms, of which no fewer than one million copies were made and distributed in 770 to various Buddhist temples by order of the Empress Shotoku. There is documented evidence that printed Buddhist images were made at a considerably earlier date.

From an esoteric Buddhist text translated during the T'ang dynasty:"...at the seashore, or on the bank of a river, one takes an 'image seal with the form of a pagoda' and presses it in the sand once for each time one makes an invocation. After this has been done 600,000 times, one will receive a vision of (there follows in the translation here the name of a somewhat obscure bodhisattva)...and everything that one desires will come to pass."