先看，後讀。
這一幅畫面裡有三處刻印的痕跡。請依次按下：一個人的名字、一句獻辭、一個願望。

此刻不作翻譯。

Look before you read.
Three printed traces sit inside this panel. Press them in order: a person's name, a dedication, a wish.

Nothing is translated yet.

一 · 題記

那三處，是一句話

01 · the colophon

The three traces are one sentence

咸通九年四月十五日，王玠為其父母恭敬造此經，普遍布施。

一個人出資，請人刻版、刷印、裝裱一部經，落款寫下父母。經文不留給自己，而要「普施」——普遍地散出去。這是這件東西被造出來的理由。

「世界現存最早、有明確紀年的完整印本書」是後世的歷史分類，是十九世紀以後的知識框架加在它身上的名目，不是它被製作時的目的。先有孝心與布施的願，之後才有印刷史。

"On the fifteenth day of the fourth month of the ninth year of Xiantong [11 May 868], Wang Jie reverently caused this to be made for his two parents, for universal distribution."

One person paid for blocks to be cut, sheets to be printed, a scroll to be assembled — and signed it with his parents. The merit was not kept: 普施, to give out universally. That is why the thing exists.

"The world's earliest complete surviving dated printed book" is a later historical classification, a frame placed on the object by modern scholarship. It is true, and it is not the reason. The devotion came first; the printing record came after.

二 · 物質關係

七張紙，先是紙，再是經

卷子由七張黃染紙橫向黏接而成，全長約五公尺。紙以麻與桑（楮）纖維抄造。各段分別以雕版刷印，之後接縫成卷。

造紙的人、刻版的人、上墨刷印的人、裱接的人，都沒有留下名字。我們只能通過他們手上的動作認識他們。請逐一完成這四個動作。

02 · material relations

Seven sheets, paper before scripture

Seven sheets of yellow-dyed paper, pasted end to end into a horizontal roll roughly five metres long. The paper was made from hemp and mulberry fibre. Each section was printed separately from carved woodblocks, then joined.

The papermakers, block cutters, printers and assemblers left no names. They are present only in what their hands did. Work through the four actions below.

三 · 譯本的來歷

紙上的漢文，本身也是一次翻譯

卷中所印為《金剛般若波羅蜜經》，此一漢譯本與鳩摩羅什相關聯，約成於公元四〇〇年前後的長安譯場，是一個譯者與譯經群體共同的成果。其背後是更長的梵文 Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā 傳統，經由中亞路線輾轉東傳。

須說清楚：鳩摩羅什並未製作這卷八六八年的印本。譯出與刷印之間相隔四個半世紀。此頁不提供梵文原本的頁面，也不主張漢梵之間存在無摩擦的對等——每一次轉譯都留下了選擇的痕跡。

在這一頁上，漢文是本體；英文只是進入的另一條通道。

03 · the translation it carries

The Chinese on the paper is itself a translation

The scroll prints 金剛般若波羅蜜經, the Chinese version associated with Kumārajīva, produced around 400 CE by a translator working with a whole translation community. Behind it stands the far longer Sanskrit Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā tradition, carried east along Central Asian routes.

To be exact: Kumārajīva did not make this 868 scroll. Four and a half centuries separate the translation from the printing. No Sanskrit original page is reproduced here, and no frictionless equivalence between the languages is claimed — every rendering leaves the mark of a choice.

On this page the Chinese is the object; English is a route alongside it, not a replacement for it.

四 · 藏、開、移

一間封起來的側室

卷子長期存於敦煌莫高窟第十七窟——後稱「藏經洞」。這間側室在十一世紀前後被封閉，數萬件寫本、印本與繪畫因乾燥與封閉而得以留存。保存它的不是任何一位個人，而是敦煌一地佛教社群長時間的抄寫、供養與收貯。

約一九〇〇年，道士王圓籙在清理窟區時發現這處封閉的密室，並在其後數年間看守其中所藏。一九〇七年，斯坦因（Aurel Stein）在其考察隊與當地人力協助下取得大量文獻，此卷隨之運離敦煌。這是這件物品的現代史的一部分：既不宜將斯坦因寫成唯一的「發現者」，也不宜略去敦煌本地的守護者。

今藏英國倫敦大英圖書館，編號 Or.8210/P.2。

04 · sealed, found, removed

A side chamber, walled up

The scroll survived in Cave 17 at the Mogao grottoes near Dunhuang — the Library Cave. Sealed around the eleventh century, the small chamber held tens of thousands of manuscripts, prints and paintings, kept legible by dryness and by being shut. What preserved it was not one person but the long practice of Dunhuang's Buddhist communities: copying, donating, depositing, closing.

Around 1900 the Daoist caretaker Wang Yuanlu came upon the sealed chamber while clearing the site, and held custody of its contents in the years that followed. In 1907 Aurel Stein, working with his expedition's staff and local labour, acquired a large portion of the material, and this scroll left Dunhuang. That is plainly part of the object's modern history — Stein was not its sole heroic discoverer, and the Dunhuang custodians are not to be written out of it.

It is now held by the British Library, London, shelfmark Or.8210/P.2.

五 · 紀錄

金剛般若波羅蜜經

05 · the record

Diamond Sutra