Shigu are ten steamed bun-shaped granite stone piers made in the Qin Dynasty.
A four-character poem is engraved on the surface of each drum. The text on the drum is called "Shiguwen". Because the poem describes the hunting in the field by the king of Qin, it is also called "Hunting Jiewen".
"Shiguwen" is a transitional calligraphy style between bronze inscriptions and small seal scripts, also known as "籀书". It is the earliest existing stone inscription in my country.
In the early Tang Dynasty, it was unearthed in Sanchouyuan, Tianxing (now Baoji, Shaanxi). When the stone drum inscriptions were unearthed, after more than a thousand years of wind and rain, they were exposed to sun, rain, wildfires, and were covered with moss. Some of the words were mottled. It fell off, and half of the 465 words were unrecognizable. Calligraphers of the Tang Dynasty such as Yu Shinan, Ouyang Xun, and Chu Suiliang all went there to copy and make rubbings.
In the first year of Yuanhe (806 AD), Emperor Xianzong of the Tang Dynasty, Han Yu, who was then a doctor of Guozixue, suggested to the Imperial Academy that the Qin stone drum should be moved to Taixue as a teaching object and protected. The Imperial College refused to offer wine. It was not until the ninth year of Yuanhe (AD 814) that Zheng Yuqing moved the stone drum to Fengxiang Confucius Temple. By this time, one side of the stone drum had been lost.
After the war and migration, Shigu was moved out of the Confucius Temple by unknown persons, and there was no trace of it. In the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, Sima Chi, the magistrate of Fengxiang County, found the lost nine-sided stone drum and placed it under the gate of Fengxiang Mansion School.
In the fourth year of Emperor Renzong of the Song Dynasty (AD 1052), Xiang Chuanshi used a stone drum rubbing called "Zuoyuan" as a clue, searched for thousands of miles, and finally found it in a small village in the Qinling Mountains. The lost stone drum. During the Daguan period, Huizong Zhao Ji issued an edict to move the ten-faced stone drum to Bianjing. He also ordered goldsmiths to fill the inscriptions on the stone drum with gold and move it to the Baohe Hall for collection.
During the "Jingkang Incident", the ten-sided stone drum was moved to Yanjing by the Jin army along with other precious cultural relics. During the period, the stone drum was seriously damaged. During the Dade period of the Yuan Dynasty, Yu Ji, a professor of Guozixue, found an abandoned ten-sided stone drum in the mud and grass. He moved the stone drum to the stone altar inside the Dacheng Gate of Guozixue and set up an iron fence for protection. Only 386 words are saved.
The ten-sided stone drum is now stored in the Palace Museum in Beijing. Only about 310 characters of the stone drum text remain.
Shigu writing style belongs to the large seal script system, also known as Zhouwen. It is the earliest stone inscription discovered so far. It further standardizes the Chinese style, making its layout more elegant and dignified, natural and simple, square and well-proportioned. Stretch and be generous.
Shiguwen attaches great importance to the three-dimensional effect of the text structure and the awareness of the brushstrokes of the lines. The characters are tied up, down, left and right, high and low, dense, scattered and strange, and the music is full of changes. The writing power is rigorous, strong enough to carry a cauldron, round and dignified, and the first of its kind in small seal script.
These ten sides seem to be drums from the sky. People today still have many unsolvable mysteries about their characters and shapes. The calligraphy art of Shiguwen provided rich content and broad development space for later calligraphy creation.