A Technological Marvel
Haeinsa Temple’s pristine treasure
As I dumped my bags by the door, having lugged them for half an hour from the bus stop up the mountainside to Haeinsa Temple, a most un-monk-like young man in a white lab coat rushed towards me. “No, not here. The Templestay is further up the hill”, he said, shooing me out quickly. It’s true that despite the temple-like roof, the large open plan climate-controlled room with people in lab coats working at rows of desks wasn’t the environment I had expected in a temple. I had gone into the wrong building, and had unwittingly stumbled into the operations centre of a closely guarded project: the digitization of the Tripitaka Koreana.
The Tripitaka Koreana is the earliest complete extant source of the sacred texts that define Chinese Buddhism – a bit like the earliest complete Chinese Buddhist Bible, I suppose – and it has been housed at Haeinsa Temple since 1398. It consists of no less than 81,352 printing woodblocks, all exactly the same size, and carved so uniformly by a team of craftsmen from 1237 to 1248 that it could have been the work of one hand.
Astonishingly, this is actually the SECOND set of blocks, as the first set got burnt in a Mongol invasion. To think, in Europe at that time monks were still copying everything by hand (with all the errors that entails). Woodblock printing only arrived some 250 years later.
That they are still in pristine condition, unwarped and uncracked, 800 years later is testament to the incredibly advanced scientific knowledge that went into their manufacture and storage.
Each block was made from broad planks of hardwood with few knots, cut 3 cm deep. These were seasoned by being soaked for three years in salt water before being thoroughly dried in the shade and wind before the surface was planed and the carving could begin. Once carved, a poisonous lacquer was applied to prevent insect infestation, and the blocks were then clamped into frames to prevent warping and which were designed to allow air to circulate around the block.
But even more astonishing is the science that went into the repository buildings at Haeinsa Temple. These were built specifically to house the woodblocks and they have played a crucial part in preserving them so well for over 625 years. To avoid fungal growth, the buildings are in a sunny spot where no parts are in constant shade and airflow inside is promoted by assymetrical window sizes above and below on either side of the buildings. To keep humidity levels as constant as possible between the hot humid Korean summers and cold dry winters, under the clay floors lie thick layers of salt, charcoal and lime, which absorb the moisture in summer and release it in winter. How on earth did the monks in 1398 work out these climate-controlling methods?
As an indication of just how effective they have been, a few blocks started to warp after just months when they were moved in the 1970s to a concrete building – supposedly for safekeeping. They were moved straight back to their original home.
