Stone-rubbings, which inspired the invention of printing, have a long history in China. Records of important events were inscribed on bones and bronze as early as the second millennium B.C., and brick, tile, ceramics, wood, and jade were also engraved to preserve writings and pictorial representations; however, the medium most used for long inscriptions was stone.

The most extensive of several large projects to preserve authoritative texts was the carving of the Buddhist canon on 7,137 stone tablets or steles -- over 4 million characters -- in an undertaking that continued from 605 to 1096.

Earlier, from 175 to 183, the seven Confucian Classics in over 200,000 characters were carved on 46 steles, front and back, to establish and preserve standard versions of the texts for students, scholars, and scholar-officials of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220).

The Confucian Classics were also inscribed by six successive dynasties, the last engraving, by the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), at the end of the eighteenth century. At sacred sites, cliffs and rock faces were also used for large religious inscriptions.

To make a rubbing, a sheet of moistened paper is laid on the inscribed surface and tamped (rammed) into every depression (engraved part) with a rabbit's-hair brush. (By another method, the paper is laid on dry, then brushed with a rice or wheat-based paste before being tamped.) When the paper is almost dry, its surface is tapped with an inked pad. The paper is then peeled from the stone. Since the black ink does not touch the parts of the paper that are pressed into the inscription, the process produces white characters on a black background. (If the inscription is cut in relief, rather than intaglio, black and white is reversed.)