A woodcut of the Koran printed in 1874, or the 13rd year under the rein of young Emperor Tongzhi in the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), which is 18 years older than the previous earliest found in China, has turned up in a Chinese collector's home.

Printed on bamboo paper, the Koran woodcut has 96 pages of the first and second chapters of the Koran. Its lections were all written in Arabian, but the preface is in Chinese.

It was owned by Peng Xiong, a noted collector and a council member of a collectors association in Chengdu, capital of southwestern China's Sichuan Province.

Most Koran copies were handwritten according to the custom of the Hui ethnic group, which was hard to study, the preface enunciated as the reason of making the woodcut.

Experts say Islam was introduced to China in the Tang Dynasty (618-907). The entire manuscript of a Koran written in 1318 and stone inscriptions from the Song and Yuan dynasties (960-1368) have also been found. The earliest woodcut before this one was made in 1892 and was discovered in southwest China's Yunnan Province.

Written in 114 chapters, the Koran was forbidden to be translated into other languages in early times. The earliest foreign version found in the world was written in Farsi (Persian).To date, the Koran has been translated into at least 60 languages.The earliest whole Chinese version was published in Beijing in 1927.
 
(Xinhua News Agency September 26, 2003)