If we come to the conclusion that "stone carving can't be learned" and adopt an exclusive attitude towards stone carving calligraphy, it will be one-sided, and this issue should be analyzed in detail. Many original books in ancient China, especially the works of some famous calligraphers, have long been lost. Thanks to the stone carving, it should be the achievement of stone carving. Compared with stone carvings, the number of authentic works in the existing world is far less than that of stone carvings. Moreover, there was no photographic printing in ancient times, and ordinary literati rarely collected famous ink at home. They all learned calligraphy from rubbings of famous inscriptions in past dynasties. If "learning stone carving is impossible", they have nothing to learn. Even a few families who collect Gu Mo have to learn the rubbings of ancient stone carvings because of their limited ink. I'm afraid some people have a large collection of Gu Mo, and I've never heard of anyone refusing to learn ancient stone carvings. In fact, even Mi Fei, who proposed that "stone carving should not be learned", learned a lot of stone carving calligraphy, such as The Diamond Sutra by Liu Gongquan, Liu Kuanbei in Han Dynasty, Zuizhu in Qin Dynasty and Shi Guwen. It can be said that countless calligraphers have studied rubbings.
Stone carvings retain a lot of precious ancient calligraphy materials, which are necessary for us to learn calligraphy. It is wrong to refuse to study. Even if everyone can get a photocopy of ancient calligraphy ink now, we can't ignore seal cutting when studying. Without learning seal cutting, the information will be far from enough. Many people weigh the advantages and disadvantages according to the fact that tablet engraving is distorted and rich in information, and put forward the methods of learning both ink tablet and tablet engraving: for example, learning European books, such as Jiuchenggong, Huangfu Tablet and Huadu Temple, and learning to photocopy Dream, Shang Bo, Hans Zhang and Thousand-Character Works with ink. The tablet of Xue Yan and Tan Ji of Ma Guxian should refer to the ink of Confession, and the printed book of Xue Yan can refer to the ink of Sacrifice to a Nephew. You can refer to Han bamboo slips when you study the official script of Han tablet; Learning Wei Bei can refer to the writings of the Northern Wei Dynasty and the ink on Gaochang's tomb table; To learn the lower case of Jin and Tang Dynasties, we can refer to the writing ink of the Six Dynasties and Tang Dynasties. This ink-based writing stroke is a correct learning method to correct the writing stroke errors of inscriptions. This method is especially useful for beginners of calligraphy.
There are still some people who do not want to pursue the original brushwork without seal cutting at all, but concentrate on the special effects of words, knife carving, weathering and wear in the calligraphy of stone inscriptions, thinking that they are rich in "stone taste" and creating new brushwork in order to express this "stone taste" line, which is another way to learn calligraphy of stone inscriptions. Contrary to Mi Fei's view that "stone carving cannot be learned". Many epigraphy calligraphers in Qing Dynasty adopted this creative learning method, which contributed to the development of calligraphy art in China. Learning in this way requires some basic skills in calligraphy, which is generally not suitable for beginners.