The Kingdom Of Preservation

The Tripitaka Koreana - carved on 81258 woodblocks in the 13th century - is the most successful large data transfer over time yet achieved by humankind. 52 million characters of information, transmitted over nearly 8 centuries with zero data loss - an unequalled achievement. 1/ pic.twitter.com/TaNkmlldhA

— Incunabula (@incunabula) September 26, 2022

I took a course, in the course of my Master's in English, on bibliography and textual criticism. The latter didn't mean literary criticism, but identifying changes (emendations) made in the transmission of a text, and especially errors.  They creep in everywhere; from the manuscript (what is that word?) to the proofs to the final publication to changes made by the author in subsequent editions (Leave of Grass grew and changed enormously over Whitman's life.  It was the only book he published, but he revised and added to it constantly until his death.)  Or changes in pirated editions, or changes by editors who don't like some words used somewhere, or simply error (again) in the transmission of the text into a new edition.  It's rather like a very complicated game of "Telephone":  mistakes and changes and elisions happen constantly. 

The transmission of the Bible is an excellent example.  Aside from the Septuagint and the later-discovered Masoretic text, (Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures; and then the scriptures in Hebrew) just open a Nestle-Aland (the standard Greek New Testament) and look at all the footnotes indicating variation texts, usually just a word, sometimes a sentence or a passage.  There is no definitive edition of the Bible; and yet that's what these woodblocks represent for Buddhism.

Because of the supreme accuracy of the Tripiṭaka Koreana, the Japanese, Chinese, and Taiwanese versions of the Tripiṭaka are ALL based on this Korean version. 16/

— Incunabula (@incunabula) September 27, 2022

(Well, almost definitive; we're back already to that everything is a matter of conversation.) The Gospel of Mark alone has a short ending, a longer ending, and "Secret Mark," which was intentionally kept away from...the monks, I guess, since almost no one in the churches was literate at the time....and mentioned only in the works of the early church fathers (I forget which one right now, and I'm too lazy to get up and look).  The whole issue of "literalism" that appeared in early 20th century American Christianity (itself really a reaction to German Biblical scholarship in the 19th century) rests on ignoring this issue of which text is "literally" the one to take. well...literally.

So this kind of data transfer, over 8 centuries, with zero data loss, is simply beyond belief.  I am, admittedly, taking this twitter accounts word for it (why would I do the research to challenge it?), and I still find it hard to fathom.  It's more like something from a bad comic book than from reality.  And yet the thread is quite extensive on the nature of this preservation of a text; so extensive I didn't try to reproduce it all here, but commend it to your reading.

Myself, I am simply stunned.  This is one of the greatest human achievements of all time, and only now am I learning about it.  It truly is an amazing world, and there truly is always something worth learning, to learn.