"I am often handed this description, and I am advised to try to make a stone drum song from the stone drum"-these words of Han Yu recorded the history before the reunification of Qin.
Shi Guwen, also known as Hunting Stone or Engraving Stone in Yongyi, is the earliest stone inscription in China. There is no specific date, and the Song of the Stone Drum by Wei and Han Yu in Tang Dynasty is considered as a stone carving of the period. Ouyang Xiu, a poet in the Song Dynasty, has three doubts about the poem Postscript of Shigu, but he still thinks that it was written by Ishikawa in Zhou Xuanwang's time. Zheng Qiao, a poet in the Song Dynasty, believed that Shi Gu belonged to the pre-Qin period and was written after King Huiwen and before Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. Luo Zhenyu's textual research and Ma Xulun's annotation are both things, which are no different from those of Wei and Han, with a difference of only seventeen years. According to Guo Moruo's textual research, Shigu was written in Qin Xianggong for eight years, which is closer to Wang Xuan. The difference is that it was written by history books or when Chen Qin was king.
His book, written by Shi Hu, is magnificent, generous, lively and unrestrained, vigorous in temperament, combining rigidity with softness, simple and carefree. Horizontal and vertical, rigorous and neat, make good use of the center, the thickness of strokes is basically the same, some structures are symmetrical and tall, and some words are uneven, close to Xiao Zhuan without the formality of Xiao Zhuan. In terms of composition and layout, although the characters are independent, they also pay attention to the relationship between up and down, left and right, and their strong brushwork is extremely prominent in stone carvings, which is unique in China's ancient calligraphy.
Kang Youwei called it "like a golden hill, a cloud of grass, leaving me alone, and I have my own unique talents." Its script was written in the transition period from Dazhuan to Xiaozhuan. Learning from Shi Guwen can catch up with Da Zhuan and learn Xiao Zhuan, which is foolproof. Those who learn seal script in later generations regard it as an original, and all of them are familiar with it. Yang Yisun, Wu Daxiao, Wu Changshuo and Wang Fuan all benefited from it. Shi Guwen's rubbings existed in the Tang Dynasty, but they have not been handed down. Song Anguo's collection of stone drum rubbings in Song Dynasty was sold by Qin to Kawai family in Tokyo, Japan during the Republic of China. In addition, there are three kinds of early rubbings circulating in the society: Pioneer, Zhongquan and Hou Li, among which Tianyi Pavilion has 422 characters from the Northern Song Dynasty. However, the original rubbings have been lost, and now we can only see the photos of these three rubbings collected by Guo Moruo in Japan in the 1930s. The Pioneer, a Song rubbings collected by Anguo, was photocopied by the Old Commercial Press and Cultural Relics Publishing House, and was included in the book Shi Guwen Studies written by Guo Moruo. Shang Zhen Society of Shanghai Art Garden and Wu Shang of Japan have photocopies of Zhong Quan. There are photocopies of "after-effects" in the "masterpiece series" published by Zhonghua Book Company and Japan Second Choice Society. The third issue of Calligraphy by Shanghai Calligraphy and Painting Publishing House (1984) also published a photocopy of Shi Guwen's Song Tuo.