The Shui people call themselves "though", and they are a single ethnic group named "Luoyue" among the ancient Baiyue ethnic groups in southern China. They live in Sandu County on the southern border of Guizhou. In the big family of Chinese nation, Shui nationality is one of the minority nationalities with both national language and national writing.
Simple, childlike and vigorous Shuishu is an ancient script of the Shui people, which is called "Lu although" by the Shui people, and translated into Chinese is hydrology or Shuishu. Regarding the long history of Shuishu, Professor Yan, a famous sociologist, said in his book Shuishu Shuijia Origin: "The creation of Shuijia ancient characters can be traced back to the Yin and Shang Dynasties, which is related to Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Jinwen." Indeed, the existing 200-word Shuishu is still like Oracle Bone Inscriptions in the early Chinese characters, mostly pictographs, pictophonetic characters and knowing characters, and almost all of them are still in the original writing stage like Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Jinwen. Although Shui Shu is an original text, as an ancient cultural book of the Shui nationality, it preserves a large number of astronomical, calendar, meteorological and religious materials of the Shui nationality, which is of great value to the study of the language, social history, philosophical thinking, astronomical calendar, meteorology, literature and art, religious beliefs of the Shui nationality. This is a unique and precious cultural heritage.
There is no unified engraving of Shuishu, but copying and learning. According to the development and evolution of Shuishu, its fonts can be divided into three types: ancient, modern and variant, and its font structure can be roughly divided into four types: counting, pictographic, pictographic and comprehensive. The classification of Shuishu is complicated. As far as its good or bad luck is concerned, it can be divided into two categories: good or bad luck; As far as its scope of use is concerned, it can also be divided into two categories, namely, ordinary water books and secret books. Shuishu is divided into reader, reader, ordinary book, time book, directional book and star book.
Shuishu directly or indirectly recorded the social practice and understanding of the ancestors of Shui people on astronomical calendar, production, defense, architecture, weddings and funerals, childbirth, sacrifice, travel and many other aspects. According to research, Shuishu was popular among Shui people in Song Dynasty, and it is still widely used in their daily life, especially in funeral, marriage and architecture. Such as funeral, from entering the coffin, stopping the coffin, funeral, engagement, setting up a monument, and undressing afterwards. Every little link is restricted by Shui Shu. Another example is marriage, from inviting relatives, betrothal, opening relatives to getting married, entering a new house, returning to the door, and getting married, all of which are in accordance with the regulations of Shui Shu. In addition, there are cutting shrouds, putting coffins, repairing doors, building chicken coops, digging toilets, frying gunpowder, mending life, and taking babies back to their parents' homes. , should also be selected in accordance with the provisions of the Shui Shu.