Abstract：The advent of the rubbing technique realized the transfer of texts from stone materials to paper and facilitated the dissemination and transmission of stone inscriptions. However, in relation to the chronological origins of the rubbing technique, scholars have focused on the now commonly used character “拓 (ta)” to find literature evidence while ignoring the significant value of the character “打 (da)” as an ancient name for rubbing.
The character “打” with the meaning of rubbing went through three periods, i.e., the prominent period in the Tang and Song Dynasties, the obscure period in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, and the comeback period in the Qing Dynasty. A total of nine examples in the existing Tang Dynasty literature can prove the use of “打” with the meaning of rubbing, spanning the entire Tang Dynasty and recording a number of rubbing activities. There were four officially sponsored rubbing activities, involving three imperial inscriptions. These rubbing activities marked a continuation of the political landscape function of the stele, with the person in charge and the participants being high-ranking officials, and the resulting rubbings were either presented to the imperial court, posted for the courtiers to appreciate, or given to powerful courtiers. Some of the unofficially sponsored rubbings were used for private appreciation, such as the Stone Classics in Three Scripts and the Shi Gu Wen, which were valued highly by the literati of the Middle Tang period for their epigraphic value; others were associated with religious activities. The Buddhists, for example, used the rubbing technique to achieve a rapid reproduction of the U??ī?a Vijaya Dhāra?ī Sūtra.
Many variant texts for the character “拓”, which is now commonly used, exist in such core documents used frequently by former and contemporary scholars as the Book of Sui: Record of Classic Works, hence they are insufficient to prove the meaning of “拓” as rubbing in the Tang Dynasty. Based on the records of early character books such as Shuowen Jiezi and Yupian, and given the actual use of “拓” in manuscripts and stone inscriptions, it is certain that the original meaning of “拓” was to pick up, its common meaning was to open up, and was not associated with the rubbing activities before the Northern Song Dynasty. The postscripts on bronze wares or stones in the Northern Song Dynasty still used such characters as “摹 (mo)”, “打” and “搨 (ta)” to denote the meaning of rubbing. It was not until the late Northern Song Dynasty that the word “椎拓 (zhuita)” in the meaning of rubbing appeared in the literature and the meaning of “拓” as rubbing began to be established.
The popular character “打”, which was created at the end of the Han Dynasty, was a common character used to denote the meaning of “strike”. Around the 8th Century AD, the pronunciation of “打” was influenced by the northern dialects and changed from a yangsheng rhyme to a yinsheng rhyme. A possible reason for “打” to denote rubbing was the evolution of its original meaning of “strike”. Most of the currently found rubbing activities associated with “打” occurred in the north, where the later yinsheng rhyme of “打” was similar to the pronunciation of “搨”. Meanwhile, the two characters “打” and “搨” both had the meaning of “strike”, and were also common expressions for ancient copying techniques, making them easily confused. The character “拓”, which represented the meaning of rubbing, was probably a variant for “打”. In later times, “拓” became more widely used due to its semantic right side “石” that means “stone”, to the extent that it gradually replaced “打” as a proper name for the rubbing technique.
