In Kaibao 開寶 4 (971), Emperor Taizu 太祖 of the Song dynasty ordered the engraving of a set of printing blocks for the Chinese Buddhist canon. The Kaibao canon 開寶藏 or the Shu edition 蜀版 is a significant milestone in the history of Chinese Buddhism. However, not only do its content and history of production need to be scrutinized against existing canons such as the Goryeo 高麗 and Zhaocheng 趙城 canons, more importantly, the Kaibao canon has to be situated in the rise of printing culture in the ninth and tenth centuries as new studies have suggested. This paper focuses on the history of the Kaibao canon’s carving and printing in Chengdu. For the first time, the author proposes the hypothesis that the Kaibao canon was carved in Chengdu under the supervision of a monastic institution, most likely, Jingzhong Monastery 淨眾寺, where a sutra printing agency was located. In sum, the author intends to situate the canon in the wider printing culture of the Song and provide a new account of how the use of printing gave birth to the first printed canon. It is possible that after the blocks were carved by individual workshops, the blocks were amassed to a famous temple in Chengdu such as Jingzhong before its transport to Kaifeng 開封.
