According to the data unearthed from archaeological excavations, official script, as a cursive form of seal script, has gradually sprouted in the Warring States period and developed rapidly in the Qin Dynasty. The ink on Qin bamboo slips reflecting this process has been unearthed since 1970s.
Qingchuan Bamboo Slips 1980 were unearthed in the Qin Tomb of Haojiaping, Qingchuan County, Sichuan Province. Mao's calligraphy was written in the second year of the Warring States Period (309 BC). This is an ink that can reflect the transition from seal script to official script in the middle and late Warring States period. We can see that some glyphs still completely retain the characteristics of seal script, but more glyphs are pressed into a square flat, and there are strokes, strokes and turning movements of official script.
Qin bamboo slips of Yunmeng Crouching Tiger Land, 1975 Unearthed from TombNo. 1 1 in Yunmeng Crouching Tiger Land, Hubei Province. Bamboo slips 1 155, including 18 kinds of chronologies, dictionaries and Qin laws, were written from the end of the Warring States Period to the first 2 17 years after Qin Shihuang unified China. The owner of the "Xi" tomb was a small official during the Qin Shihuang period.
The font of "Crouching Tiger Hiding in Qin Bamboo Slips" (Figure 1.43) is an early official script, which gradually evolved from the simplification of seal script and cursive script. Some font structures retain the elements of seal script, but the pen has obvious wave-picking and turning movements, which is called "Qin Li" by ancient literary scholars. Generally speaking, the official script features of the Qin bamboo slips in Sleeping Tiger Land are much stronger and more mature than the Qingchuan wooden slips in the late Warring States period. As far as style is concerned, the brushwork of Qin bamboo slips in Sleeping Tiger Land is vigorous, plain and simple, which is in sharp contrast with the romantic and extreme performance of Chu bamboo slips.
Liye Qin Bamboo Slips (color picture 5) were unearthed in June 2002 in the abandoned ancient well of Qin Dynasty in Longshan County, Hunan Province, with a total of more than 36,000 pieces, mainly the official documents and files of Qin Shihuang who moved to Ling County before and after the reunification of China. The age of the collected discoveries is from the 25th year of the First Emperor (222 BC) to the 37th year of the First Emperor (265438 BC+00 BC). The font is similar to the Qin bamboo slips of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, both of which belong to the Qin Dynasty.
Liye Qin bamboo slips are written by different authors. After the recorded content, each writer has his own name, which appears in the form of "one hand", meaning writing by hand, which is equivalent to "a book" in later calligraphy works.
Liye Qin bamboo slips record local files, and there are often exercises of junior officials on the back, and the multiplication table is also recorded on the back of one of them. From the comparison of positive and negative aspects, we can see that even the most daily writing needs good training. Comparing the exercises on the back, the official records on the front are obviously different from those on the back.
Different from the usual bamboo slips, Liye slips are wooden slips and relatively wide. A bamboo slip usually writes many lines, similar to a wooden slip, which records a relatively complete paragraph. His calligraphy posture is also slightly vertical because of multi-line writing. The font and sleeping tiger bamboo slips are all from Qin Li, and the times have also overlapped or overlapped, but the brushwork means that the shape of the bamboo slips used is slightly different from that of the writers: the sleeping tiger bamboo slips are round; Ligezhen is thin and hard, with dense rules. The calligraphy significance of Liye bamboo slips seems to be closely related to the silk book "Letters from the Vertical and Horizontal Family" copied from Mawangdui in the Qin and Han Dynasties. With regard to the rise of official script, Ban Gu's History of Literature and Art holds that "official script began with Qin Shihuang, and the official prison was troubled, so it should be simplified and applied to official script".
Judging from the unearthed bamboo slips and documents, the early official script should be from the late Warring States to the Qin Dynasty, and seal script was gradually produced in heavy daily writing, because it is convenient to preserve bamboo slips. The merit of Cheng Miao's official script recorded in Historical Records should be to organize and standardize these official scripts, and get official recognition and promotion. The excavations of Qin Bamboo Slips in Sleeping Tiger Land and Liye Bamboo Slips show that this early official script, as a daily book, has actually been recognized by the Qin government and widely used in official documents. At the same time, in the ink of many Qin bamboo slips that have been unearthed, there is no standard seal style similar to the stone carvings of the Qin Dynasty, which shows that the seal style should be used in some solemn occasions in the Qin Dynasty, and Qin Li seen in unearthed bamboo slips should be widely used in actual daily life.