Dunhuang suicide note contains more than 40,000 volumes of ink from the Sixteen Kingdoms of Jin Dynasty to the Northern Song Dynasty. It is the most abundant and systematic first-hand material to study the history of China's opening period and its calligraphy art. The style of Dunhuang suicide note has obvious characteristics of the times and regions, and is called the style of Confucian classics. Scripture originated from simplified Chinese characters in Han Dynasty and was completed in regular script in Tang Dynasty. It is an important style of copying scriptures after the Jin Dynasty. It recorded in detail the whole process of the script opening in China after the official reform, which greatly promoted the development of the script.
There are three kinds of rubbings of Tang Dynasty in Dunhuang suicide note. There are Ou Yangxun's How to Spend Life, Liu Gongquan's Diamond Sutra, Tang Taizong's Li Shimin's Hot Springs, and even Wang Xizhi's 17 post. These rubbings and temporary stickers are extremely precious, and they are rare Mo Bao in the Tang Dynasty.
calligraphy theory
The manuscript about calligraphy theory in Dunhuang suicide note has three leaves, which is quite remarkable. First of all, the writing method is discussed, and the proportional relationship of strokes, thickness, length, width and the size relationship between words are discussed in detail and incisively. The second and third books are Wang Xizhi's Book Theory and Incomplete Volume of Style Theory, which are Wang Xizhi's manuscripts of book theory in folklore.
‘hardpen' calligraphy
Hard pen calligraphy in Dunhuang scrolls is a folk creation that has never been recorded in the history of calligraphy. The so-called hard pen here was then a wooden pen or a reed pen. Judging from the physical objects unearthed in Gansu, the tip of the hard pen split into two petals, which is exactly the same as the tip dipped in water today. This shows that China's hard pen calligraphy has existed since ancient times.
Minority languages
Because Dunhuang was occupied by many nationalities in history, many minority languages were preserved in the suicide note. There are Sanskrit, Mongolian, Uighur, Xixia, Tubo and so on. Tubo (ancient Tibetan) has the largest number. These volumes are written with brush or hard pen, which are quite neat and smooth, full of rhythm and unique aesthetic taste, and have high artistic value of calligraphy.