Qianlong Edition of the Tripitaka Sutra

From Wiki China org cn

A ceremony was held in Beijing on Nov. 24, 1988, to celebrate the first publication of the reprinted Qianlong Edition of the Tripitaka Sutra (Qianlong was an emperor of the Qing Dynasty).

Bainqen Erdini Qoigyi Gyaincain, honorary chairman of the Buddhist Association of China, and Zhao Puchu, chairman of the Buddhist Association of China, both attended the ceremony.

The Qianlong Edition of the Tripitaka Sutra, dubbed as the encyclopedia of Buddhism, includes not only important information for Buddhist research, but also precious clues to ancient Oriental languages, literature, art, philosophy and medicine.

As the world's biggest block-printed ancient classic, it consists of 79,000 wooden blocks and weighs 400 tons. It is a collection of 7,240 volumes of Buddhist sutras, with a total 67 million Chinese characters.

The reprinted Sutra by Cultural Relics Press has 2,000 volumes.