Dunhuang Classic
The Dunhuang Classic (碁(棋)经) is one of the earliest surviving go manuals.
The text was written on a scroll and was found at Dunhuang Mogao (Turkestan, China) a city on the silk road The size of the scroll is 15.5 x 240 cm
The age is not exactly known but it is thought to be written during the late circa 550 AD. (This date is given by Andrew Lo and Tzi-Cheng Wang, Spider Threads Roaming the Empyrean: The Game of Weiqi", in Colin Mackenzi and Irving Finkel, eds., Asian Games: The Art of Contest (Asia Society, 2004), p. 192.)
An electronic copy of the Dunhuang Classic (there is a translation there, as well).
The text is being conserved at the British library in London as part of the
International Dunhang Project.
The conservation is sponsered by Zenmachine,
There are no diagrams in the text, and the (first) part of the text contains mostly kyu level advice.
The text of the first chapter ends with:
Although, this essay is meager and clumsy, it can reflect the patterns of things. Those who play accordingly will stay alive.