Since the Han Dynasty, our country has had a tradition of writing and engraving inscriptions. Generally, in order to praise virtues, write chronicles, preserve ancient books, and pass down calligraphy, we all engrave inscriptions on inscriptions to make them famous to future generations. Therefore, the text of the inscription covers a wide range of topics and is rich in content. For example, there are biographies, records of dynasties and military wars, actual records of earthquakes, floods, and insect infestations, descriptions of the history of the rise and fall of buildings, records of regulations, laws and regulations formulated by the government and the private sector, and poems. The engravings of famous works can be said to be a series of books carved on stone. It is of extremely important value for compiling annals and collecting official records. In addition, what is particularly valuable in the inscriptions is the extremely rich calligraphy works preserved.
Chinese calligraphy art has a long history. Since the Shang and Zhou dynasties, calligraphy styles have been developing, changing, innovating and progressing, gradually forming five calligraphy styles: seal, official, cursive, true and running. However, in the long river of history, each era has different characteristics, and famous artists have emerged in large numbers throughout the ages, each with their own artistic styles. Therefore, the five calligraphy styles constitute a flourishing situation with different characteristics and diverse styles. The older the time, the less authentic calligraphy remains, and the more important the inscriptions become. Only inscriptions can systematically reflect the historical appearance of ancient calligraphy art.
Writing was produced in China during the pre-Qin period. Archaeologists argue that the oracle bone inscriptions were carved on tortoise shells and animal bones. Because it is used for divination and prediction of good and bad luck, it is called "divination". But it already possesses the basic elements of Chinese calligraphy art: brush use, structure, composition, etc. During the Yin and Zhou dynasties, the inscriptions cast on bells and tripods, also known as "Zhongding Wen", were widely popular.
After Qin Shihuang unified China (in 221 BC), he implemented the policy of "writing with the same text and carriages with the same track" and unifying weights and measures. Prime Minister Li Si was responsible for simplifying the large seal script originally used by the Qin State, canceling the variant characters of the other six countries, and creating a unified Chinese writing form - small seal script. Xiaozhuan remained popular in China until the end of the Western Han Dynasty (about 8 AD), when it was gradually replaced by official script. But because of its beautiful font, it has always been favored by calligraphers. And because the strokes are complex, the form is ancient, and twists and turns can be added at will, seals, especially official seals that require anti-counterfeiting, have always been made in seal script until the fall of the feudal dynasty and the emergence of new anti-counterfeiting technology in modern times.
The so-called seal script is actually 掾(yuàn) script, which is an official script. It is a standardized and common font for official documents. According to literature records, there was no special name for Chinese calligraphy before Qin, but Xiaozhuan gradually evolved from the Qin characters in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. Because it is an official document, Xiaozhuan is only suitable for solemn occasions, such as engraving stones to record meritorious service, Uncle Liang's imperial edict, and military and tiger talismans. The style of standard seal script is neatly arranged, with round strokes and smooth and long lines, showing a solemn and beautiful style. Compared with oracle bone inscriptions and bronze inscriptions, it has the following basic characteristics: the characters are long and slender, and the strokes extend downward to form the upper density. The visual illusion of sparseness is also related to the top-down layout; the lines are well-proportioned, and the strokes are uniform in thickness regardless of the length of the stipples. This kind of even strokes in strength and speed gives people a pure and simple aesthetic. Coupled with the tendency for font structures to become increasingly simple and fixed, the compositional layout of Xiaozhuan script can form a more orderly sequence of vertical and horizontal lines. Qin seal scripts are divided into round and square scripts. The round script is represented by Qin carved stones, and the square script is represented by Qin Zhao's copyright, which is the popular style of Qin seal script.
Chinese characters have developed into the Xiaozhuan stage and gradually begun to take shape (such as outlines, strokes, structures, etc.). The pictographic meaning has weakened, making the characters more symbolic and reducing confusion and difficulties in writing and reading. This has It is also the first time in the history of our country that administrative means have been used to standardize writing on a large scale. The Qin Dynasty used the compiled Xiaozhuan script to unify the national writing system, which not only basically eliminated the phenomenon of different writing styles in various places, but also greatly changed the situation of numerous ancient writing styles. It played an important role in the history of Chinese writing development. In addition to small seal script, it also includes oracle bone inscriptions and bronze inscriptions, which are collectively referred to as ancient Chinese characters. The development of paleography has a very important impact on promoting the research of ancient Chinese history, philosophy, economy, law, culture, science and technology.
After the fall of the Qin Dynasty, Qin Xiaozhuan lost strong political support and quickly faded away.
The Han people broke the constraints of the Qin Xiaozhuan form when writing, and enhanced the freedom of writing. In addition, the Han Dynasty was a magnificent and powerful empire, and it was able to win over people in culture and art. The Han Dynasty The writing as a whole is mainly official script. In such an environment of the times, seal characters have undergone major changes and developed their own characteristics. The most obvious aspect of this change is the so-called "subordinate change".
In the writing of the Han Dynasty, the composition of seal script and official script often showed different tendencies due to changes in the writers and the writing era. As a period of transformation for writing, official script was greatly influenced by seal script, and similarly, Han seal script was also greatly influenced by official script. As the official script gradually became the mainstream, the seal characters of this period changed to an increasing extent as time went by. Just looking at the lines of the characters, the large and small seals are mainly round and soft, while the Chinese seals are mainly square and upright. Aesthetically speaking, the former is elegant and the latter is vigorous, each is good at its own merit.
Looking at the seal characters themselves in the Han Dynasty, while people became more and more familiar with the strict and standardized glyphs of the small seal characters, they also paid more attention to the decorative nature of the seal characters. Therefore, the seal characters continued to appear in daily life and In various art categories, the scope of application has expanded, and the mentality of application seems to be relatively relaxed. Under such circumstances, the situation of "applying color according to the situation" is greatly enhanced. The so-called "shape" refers to the carrier of words; the so-called "color" refers to the beauty of words to be expressed. In the seal script of the Eastern Han Dynasty, "applying color according to the shape" is most obvious. The most typical one is the seal. In addition, there are also highly decorative "artistic characters" such as the forehead of the stele and the mirror inscriptions on bricks and tiles. During the Han and Wei dynasties, the Qin Dynasty seal script came to an end. Apart from the seal script used for inscriptions and artifacts, it was rare to have an independent seal script.