(1) Oracle Bone Inscriptions. According to archaeological findings, Oracle Bone Inscriptions was the first Chinese character to be systematized and spread to this day. What is "Oracle Bone Inscriptions"? Oracle Bone Inscriptions refers to the characters carved on tortoise shells and animal bones in Shang Dynasty. Oracle Bone Inscriptions was discovered in 1899 Xiaotun Village, Anyang County, Henan Province. In fact, someone must have seen these deep-rooted bones before, and the locals called them "keels", but no one knew what they were at that time. In Shang Dynasty, Xiaotun Village in Anyang County was the capital of Yin Dynasty. The slave Yin Dynasty worshipped gods very much and asked everything. For example, we should ask questions such as offering sacrifices to pray for the New Year, striving for peace, farming and hunting, weather phenomena and so on. We can know from the Oracle bone inscriptions that the contents of Oracle bone inscriptions are mainly recorded by the royal family in Yin Dynasty on tortoise shells and animal bones for divination, so people usually call them "Oracle Bone Inscriptions". The characters used in Oracle bone inscriptions in Oracle Bone Inscriptions are very limited, and some characters are not used in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, so they have not been seen in Oracle Bone Inscriptions. However, we can't say that the characters that have not been seen in Oracle Bone Inscriptions did not exist at that time. For example, the word "min" appeared many times on bronzes in the early years of the Zhou Dynasty, all of which meant stabbing an eye with an awl (Figure 2). At that time, "people" represented slaves in ancient times, but Oracle Bone Inscriptions has not found the word "people" so far. As the earliest written language in China, Oracle Bone Inscriptions has the characteristics of unfixed form and inconsistent writing procedures. In addition, because the handwriting is carved on the bone block with the original sharp weapon, the strokes are thin and shallow, mostly Fang Bi, and there are fewer round pens.
② inscriptions on bronze. Bronze inscriptions refer to characters cast or carved on bronze wares. The ancients called bronzes "auspicious gold", so later they called the words on bronzes "bronze inscriptions", with Zhong and Ding as typical examples, so bronze inscriptions were also called "bronze inscriptions". "Jinwen" existed at the end of Yin Dynasty, but after all, it was too few. Therefore, the inscriptions on bronze in the Zhou Dynasty mainly refer to inscriptions on bronze. The social culture of Zhou Dynasty was much more prosperous than that of Yin and Shang Dynasties. People in the Zhou Dynasty didn't believe in ghosts and gods like the Yin people, so with the development of the times, Oracle Bone Inscriptions gave way to the bronze inscription. In the Zhou Dynasty, bronze ware was mainly a symbol of the power of the royal princes, and the people were never allowed to cast or use it. The content of the bronze inscription mainly records who this bronze ware belongs to, and some records the merits, sacrifices and rewards from whom. Great changes have taken place in the form of inscriptions on bronze. Jinwen was developed by Oracle Bone Inscriptions, and it is simpler than Oracle Bone Inscriptions in strokes and structure. They are characterized by thick and natural lines, neat fonts and irregular fonts, and there are many different ways to write a word. Especially during the Warring States Period, many decorative elements similar to birds and insects appeared in the writings of southern countries such as Wu Yuechu, which was called "Bird and Insect Book" by later generations.
(3) seal script. The name "seal script" has always been controversial. Some scholars call it "seal script maker, rafter, rafter, official" (rafter, music house, the collective name of ancient official members. In other words, the so-called "seal script" is actually a "manuscript", which is also an "official book". There was no paper in the Qin dynasty, and the recorded and read words were written on bamboo slips. According to the records in Historical Records, Qin Shihuang personally read 1.20 Jin of official books written on bamboo slips one day. These official books were "seal scripts", but there was no such title at that time. It was not until the official script appeared in the Han Dynasty that the previous official script was called "seal script", so "seal script" was relative. Seal script can be divided into "big seal script" and "small seal script".
(1) big seal script. According to historical records, Zhou Xuanwang Taishicheng wrote 15 pieces of Da Zhuan. In this way, Da Zhuan was used in the Zhou Dynasty. The original seal script was "Shi Guwen". In the early Tang Dynasty, ten drum-shaped stone piers were discovered in Baoji, Shaanxi. They are engraved with characters, which are called "Shi Guwen". Their contents are recorded by rhyme, which is different from the ancient prose in Yin and Zhou Dynasties. The characteristics of big seal script are that the lines are relatively complete, uniform and soft; The structure is relatively neat, which lays the foundation of square Chinese characters; But the strokes are complicated and writing is not convenient enough.
(2) Xiao Zhuan. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the characters of different countries were quite different, resulting in a situation of different voices and different characters. With the unification of the six countries by Qin Shihuang, in order to meet the needs of the establishment and development of political power, Qin Shihuang ordered "writing with the same character", abolished six other characters that were incompatible with Qin seal script (that is, "ancient prose" as the Han and Wei people said), and popularized Qin characters, but not copied from the past, but a kind of "big seal script" based on Qin characters. In order to show the difference between the old and new seal scripts, later generations called the new seal script "Xiao Zhuan" and the old seal script "Da Zhuan". The upper limit of characters in the Qin Dynasty is the Spring and Autumn Period, which ends with bamboo slips in the Qin Dynasty, with a history of more than 600 years. There are three ways for the evolution of Dazhuan to Xiaozhuan: (1) deformation; (2) False phenomenon; (3) Save the changes (Figure 6). Among the above three changes, the change of existence is the main way, which conforms to the development needs of social and political life and the development law of Chinese characters from complexity to simplicity. Now some calligraphers attribute the inscriptions on bronze in the Western Zhou Dynasty and the writing style in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period to the seal script system, which is very broad. If we take the characters of Yin and Shang as the starting point and classify the characters of Shang, Zhou, Spring and Autumn and Warring States as seal script fonts, it can be called the seal script era in the history of calligraphy for more than 1000 years.
(4) Official script. At the end of the Warring States period, official script was written in Xiao Zhuan, but the so-called unpretentious folk word "Cao Zhuan" was popular among the people. This font is characterized by straight strokes, simplified strokes and convenient writing. According to ancient documents, official script was created by a prison official named Cheng Miao in Qin Dynasty, so it was called "official script of Qin Dynasty", which was also a popular font in Qin Dynasty. Because "Qin Li" is the earliest official script seen now, also called "Guli". There are traces of seal script in ancient Li, which was still used in the early Western Han Dynasty. It was only during the period of Emperor Wudi of the Western Han Dynasty that the ancient official script evolved into a kind of official script with a "silkworm head and a wild goose tail", that is, a narrow sense of "(broadly referring to official script of the Han Dynasty). Lishu began in Qin Dynasty and flourished in Han Dynasty, so it is also called "Han Li". It was not completed until the Eastern Han Dynasty more than 200 years later, and the pictographic appearance disappeared, making the characters completely lose the color of pictures and become a purely symbolic application tool. We can call the 400 years from the Western Han Dynasty to the Western Jin Dynasty the official script era in the history of calligraphy.
(5) cursive script. Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi Xu said: "There are cursive scripts in Han Xing." This statement is correct. Cursive script is a font parallel to Han Li. In order to improve the writing efficiency, people absorbed some simplified writing methods of Cao Zhuan in the Warring States period, and constantly "simplified by deleting the complex, simplified by losing the simplified", and absorbed new cursive writing methods. It can be said that cursive writing is Han Li's scribbling method, which is quick and quick, with continuous strokes. After the formation of cursive script, it experienced two important development periods: the Eastern Han Dynasty and the Jin Dynasty. The cursive script in the Eastern Han Dynasty is word by word, and the coherent brushwork takes one word as the starting and ending unit. In the Western Jin Dynasty, Wei Guan absorbed the cursive techniques of his fathers, Wei Kai and Zhang Qi, and became a "flowing" style called "cursive script". His cursive script is also word for word, but his pen tends to "quote vertically", so that the last stroke of the upper word meets the first stroke of the lower word. Wang Xizhi of the Eastern Jin Dynasty developed the "vertical posture" brushwork, and the strokes between words were connected, forming a simple and beautiful modern cursive style.
(6) Regular script is a popular font that replaces official script and evolved from official script. The strokes are straight, the structure is square and the writing is convenient. Regular script gradually replaced official script in the Eastern Jin Dynasty and became a regular script.