Definition of "sūtra"

The printed book appeared in a variety of forms during the course of its history in China. These included, among others, the “whirlwind” binding (xuanfeng zhuang), sometimes called the “dragon scales” binding (longlin zhuang), to describe the overlapping sheets of paper within the book; the “fold” binding (zhezhuang), also known as the “folding sūtra” binding (jingzhe zhuang) or “Sanskrit” binding (fanjia zhuang), given its common use in the presentation of Buddhist texts; the “butterfly” binding (hudie zhuang), whose appellation derives from the effect of fluttering papers that accompanies the opening of the book; and the “thread” binding (xianzhuang), a technical designation that refers to the silken or cotton filaments used to stitch together folded sheets of paper into fascicles. (For diagrams of these fabrications, see Fig. 30.)

2005: Cynthia Joanne Brokaw & Kai-wing Chow, Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China, essay ten: Visual Hermeneutics and the Act of Turning the Leaf: A Genealogy of Liu Yuan’s Lingyan ge, by Anne Burkus-Chasson, p371 (The University of California Press; (10), (13))