The development and evolution of Chinese characters ╱ Bauhinia
Writing is a tool used by humans to record language and express feelings. China already had characters in the Huangdi era. This statement is due to the Yin Ruins The emergence of oracle bone inscriptions has received strong support and proof. Therefore, the creation of Chinese characters has a history of at least nearly five thousand years.
Before there was writing, the tools that humans used to express affection and help memory were roughly expressions, knots and language. However, human beings' complex and sophisticated thoughts cannot be fully expressed by expressions and knots, and language is also limited by time and space, so the production of words has come into being.
It is said that a long time ago, there was an old man with a very strange appearance. His eyebrows were raised, but there were four eyes under his eyebrows. Each eye was bright and his gaze was straight ahead. He could draw He drew many graphic symbols, and various graphic symbols represented different meanings. He concentrated on drawing carefully and worked tirelessly until late at night. Suddenly, there was a loud bang like the sky was falling apart, and heavy rain started falling in the sky. What's falling is not water droplets, but tiny grains of millet. There are cries of ghosts and gods from heaven and earth in all directions.
He is Cangjie, the legendary "God of Letters." "Huainanzi." "Ben Jing Xun" records: "In the past, Cangjie wrote a book, and grains rained from the sky, and ghosts cried at night." It describes that words have magical power, and human intelligence will advance by leaps and bounds because of "words". This will make the world that has always controlled human beings The ghosts and gods were also frightened by it, which is why such a spectacle occurred.
Later, Chinese people generally respected writing, so much so that they did not dare to destroy or throw away the paper on which writing was written. Furthermore, scholar-bureaucrats who were literate were also respected by the public. In ancient times, many officials who managed documents in the government collectively worshiped Cangjie every autumn and respected him as the "god of writing." Its origin is the legend of Cangjie, which is why later generations said that Cangjie was the first to create writing.
However, the system of writing is huge, and the creation of characters cannot be completed by one person in one time and place. History books say that the Yellow Emperor was the origin of Chinese civilization, and Cangjie was the legendary historian of the Yellow Emperor. In fact, long before Cangjie, various tribes had many ideographic symbols, but they were not consistent. Cangjie unified and organized them. Therefore, people attributed the credit for the first creation of writing to him.
Although Chinese writing has a history of five thousand years, the early writing is no longer visible. So far, the earliest known writing is the oracle bone inscriptions unearthed from Yin Ruins in the Shang Dynasty. After that, the order is roughly bronze script, Zhou script, small seal script, official script, cursive script, regular script and running script.
Bronze inscriptions are inscriptions engraved on bronze vessels. According to archaeological data, my country has entered the Bronze Age in the Xia Dynasty. Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. Many of the unearthed bronze objects have characters engraved on them. Because before the Zhou Dynasty, copper was also called "gold", so the inscriptions on the bronze objects were called "bronze inscriptions." And because this type of writing has the largest number of words on the bell and tripod, it is also called "Zhongdingwen".
Zhenwen, also known as Dazhuan, is believed by most experts and scholars to be the Qin script in the late Warring States period. The writing style of Zhen is well-proportioned and the fonts are neat, which also shows that it is an official standard script.
"Zhuan" is originally the collective name of the large seal script and the small seal script. Because it is customary to call the seal script the large seal script, later generations used "zhuan script" to refer specifically to the small seal script. At the end of the Warring States Period, after Qin Shihuang unified China, the first thing he did was to unify the written language. Prime Minister Li Si presided over this work. He abolished the various shapes in the Six Kingdoms scripts that were different from the Qin scripts, simplified and deleted the inherent Qin script, and also absorbed folk fonts to standardize them, thus forming a new official font. Xiaozhuan".
The neat and rectangular seal script is composed of evenly rounded lines, which is inconvenient to write. Therefore, a new, more sloppy font soon appeared among the people, which destroyed the dignity and neatness of Xiaozhuan and wrote round and curved lines into glyphs with square folds. It is said that this new font was more popular among the lower-class officials, servants (Zao Li), and slaves, so it was called "official script".
The "cursive script" referred to in philology is a specific type of font, which originated from the official script among the people. In the silk scripts and bamboo slips written in official script in the early Western Han Dynasty, it can be seen that some characters were written in consecutive strokes. By the late Western Han Dynasty, fonts with the cursive style of later generations appeared. After entering the Eastern Han Dynasty, these popular cursive scripts among the people were processed by literati calligraphers and took on a relatively regular and strict form. Cursive script not only connects strokes and characters, but also highly simplifies the form. Later, a variant of cursive script appeared, which is the so-called "crazy cursive". The form of Chinese characters is simplified too much, and it is also arbitrary, making it difficult for ordinary people to distinguish. Therefore, it has gradually lost its practical value and can only be appreciated as a kind of calligraphy art.
Regular script is also directly derived from official script. It changes the flat shape of official script into a square shape. People often call Chinese characters "square characters", which is for regular script. Regular script went through many changes throughout the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, and was basically mature during the Sui and Tang Dynasties. Printing, one of my country's four great inventions, uses regular script as the main font for printed books. Among the books printed in the Song Dynasty, regular script was artisticized and written more regularly and beautifully, called "Song script". Later, there were those that imitated the Song style characters and changed them, which was called "imitation Song style".
Ringshu is a font between regular script and cursive script. It is not as neat as regular script, nor as unrestrained as cursive script. Because running script is more informal than regular script and can be written quickly, it is not as sloppy as cursive script and is difficult to understand, so it is loved by people. If the writing is more correct, it is called "Xing Kai"; if it is closer to cursive writing and the writing is more indulgent, it is called "Xing Cao". Wang Xizhi, the great calligrapher of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, is known as the "Sage of Calligraphy". He created a large number of running script works. For a long time, they have been treasured and treasured works of art by future generations.
Among the many calligraphy styles, running script has the most changes and the most inconsistent writing methods, but it is also the easiest to identify. It is convenient and lively to write. It is not only practical, but also a multiple display of art forms. Therefore, It is still the most popular and widely used font to this day.
Reference books:
"Chinese Characters", a book used by the National Air University, authors: Lu Guoping and Huang Fushan.