There are more than 100 ways of writing "福" in seal script.
1. After the emergence of small seal script, the writing of the character "福" was unified as "shi" and "畐" on the right. Before the Han Dynasty, there were very few inscriptions. According to ancient records, in the Qin Dynasty Xiaozhuan character "福", the structure of the character "畐" is clearer than that in bronze inscriptions, with "一", "口" and "田" completely separated.
2. During the Qin and Han Dynasties, the meaning of the word "畐" did not only refer to the wine vessel. Xu Shen of the Han Dynasty also mentioned "畐, Manye" in "Shuowen Jiezi", and also said, "Fu" ", the pit is also, from the indication, the sound of the pit". It can be seen that in addition to the meaning of praying and blessing, the word "福" at that time also meant "full of blessings", which is different from "吉" in meaning.
3. Official script was popular in the Han Dynasty. At this time, the character "福" was square and straight compared to the smaller seal characters. In particular, the squareness of "口" and "田" in "畐" was the most obvious. In addition, the word "shi" in "福" is slightly deformed, which laid the foundation for the later regular script of the word "福".
4. The ritual stele erected in the second year of Yongshou in the Eastern Han Dynasty, the full name is "The Ritual Stele built by Han Lu Prime Minister of Confucius Temple", which is an important stele in the Han Dynasty. The ritual stele is written in official script. The strokes are thin and strong, with many twists and turns. The strokes are thin and the knife skills and strokes are thick, forming a strong visual contrast.
In the inscription on the ritual stele, there appears an auspicious saying that has an important influence on later generations - "Heaven and blessings". The meaning of this word is "God gives them (usually the people) blessings." Emperors of all dynasties often used "Heaven and Jue Fu" when offering sacrifices to heaven and praying for blessings, especially the emperors of the Qing Dynasty who used it most frequently.
5. Coincidentally, the saying "Fu Lu You Tong" also appears on another treasure of the Han Dynasty stele - Cao Quan's stele, which means "sharing the blessings".
From "Heaven and blessings" and "Fu and Lu are the same", it is not difficult to find some changes in the thinking of people in the Han Dynasty compared with people in the pre-Qin Dynasty. The "blessings" in the pre-Qin Dynasty were basically praying for themselves. , and the word "福" on the ritual stele and Cao Quan stele is to pray for others and even the world. This change is largely due to the popularity of Confucianism in the Han Dynasty.