Page 325 - The Secret Museum

I FIRST HEARD THE WORDS of the Diamond Sutra on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs.

Frances Wood, curator of Chinese works at the British Library, was the guest and she
chose, as her first disc, a recording of Buddhist monks and nuns singing it.

I had the radio on in the background, but when I heard the enchanting sound of
clanging bells and soulful song I stopped to listen carefully.

Before long, the show’s presenter, Kirsty Young, piped up: ‘That was a recording
of Buddhist monks and nuns of the Fo Guang Shan temple in Taiwan singing the
Diamond Sutra … You said, Frances Wood, that we accrued merit just by playing
this?’ Frances confirmed, ‘We did indeed.’

Frances went on to talk about the British Library’s copy of the Diamond Sutra. It
has the date it was printed marked on the last page: AD 868. This date makes it a
world treasure, because it is the earliest dated printed book in the world.

The Diamond Sutra is a teaching given by the Buddha to his disciple Subhuti.

‘Sutra’ is the Sanskrit word for teaching, and the Buddha asked Subhuti to name the
lesson ‘The Diamond of Transcendent Wisdom’. He said the words of the sutra
would cut like a diamond blade through worldly illusion to teach those who read or
chanted it what is real and everlasting. In the teaching, the Buddha explains that
chanting the sutra creates merit, or good fortune.

Perhaps listeners to Radio 4 that morning felt better for hearing it. I know I did,
which is why I wrote ‘The Diamond Sutra’ down on a piece of paper and gave
Frances Wood a call. She kindly agreed to let me see the beautiful work of art at the

British Library.
Usually it is kept in a vault in the library but, as luck would have it, Frances was
planning to get it out to show to a group of Asian art students from the School of

Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. She invited me to join them, and the
following week there we all were, gathered around seven beautiful printed pages.

The Diamond Sutra is not a book in the way we normally encounter them: it’s a
scroll nearly 5 metres long. The first page, or frontispiece, is a wonderful and
intricate drawing of the Buddha in a garden, giving the Diamond Sutra teaching to
Subhuti. Watching over them are two lions and a group of Buddhist beings, including
two angelic creatures on clouds. It is a very gentle, intricate scene, one of the
loveliest images I have ever seen.

The six pages that follow are the teachings the Buddha gave to Subhuti in the
garden, laid out in beautiful, delicate Chinese characters on yellow, mulberry paper.
The characters, like the frontispiece, were created with woodblocks – they were
carved into wood and then printed on to paper. Some of the SOAS students were
Chinese, and they remarked on how beautifully shaped the characters are. They were
really happy to see the Diamond Sutra and posed for photographs to show to their
families.

The Buddha gave the teaching in India, in a language called Pali. His lessons were