May 11, 868

May 11, 868 CE is the date commonly assigned to a book appearing with a date, in China. This book is referred to now as the Diamond Sutra. Almost a thousand year before the West had printing presses or paper, China was comfortable with these technologies. The Diamond Sutra includes this description of man's literary output. 

All composed things are like a dream, a phantom, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning.

The copy of the Diamond Sutra in question, the one that is the earliest dated book,we know of,  now resides at the British Library. It was bought from a Buddhist monk who had preserved and guarded many treasures forgotten by the world. Aurel Stein, (November 26, 1862 to October 26,  1943) who paid for this and many other treasures, in 1907, in an exchange widely considered as underhanded, is viewed with contempt by the Chinese even today.

Stein was an archeologist who had become a British citizen amd converted to Lutheranism. He was the author of numerous books documenting his adventures, and one of these,
Report of archaeological survey work in the North-West Frontier (1905) contains a story about the Buddha in one of his previous lives. Stein seems to be quoting the story:

This was the place where Prince Mahasattva (... Buddha before his enlightenment or bodhi) gave up his body to feed a hungry tigress... About 140 or 150 paces to the south was a stone Stupa (at the spot) where Mahasattva came, feeling pity for the beast which had lost its strength through hunger. At this spot he pierced his body with a piece of dry bamboo and nourished the animal with his blood, whereupon it ate him....At this spot the soil as well as the herbs and shrubs show a light reddish colour as if blood-dyed. When people dig the earth they feel as if pricked by thorns. All, whether sceptics or believers, are moved to feelings of sorrow and pain.

Sir Aurel Stein was knighted by the British for his work.