More than 3,000 years ago, Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Jinwen in Shang Dynasty were the earliest systematic and quite mature Chinese characters.
Patterns and Patterns on Ancient Pottery Oracle Bone Inscriptions This is a kind of Oracle Bone Inscriptions carved on tortoise shell, ox bone and deer bone, which was recorded when asking gods and ancestors about good or bad luck and solving doubts. It is the oldest, but it is the latest one among the ancient Chinese characters in China. Its discovery process is like an absurd and moving story made up by a glib person.
In the autumn of 1899, the king of Shandong suffered from malaria. The doctor who treated the emperor gave him a prescription, including a medicine called keel. He asked his family to go to a century-old shop to buy medicine. Wang opened the charge and was surprised to find some knife marks on the flaky "keel". Wang, who is proficient in ancient Chinese characters, immediately thought that these knife marks might be ancient Chinese characters, so he sent his family to the drugstore to buy a Chinese medicine "Wang Ji" to confirm his guess. Soon after, Liu E, the author of Lao Can's famous novel Travel Notes and an old friend who is also proficient in ancient Chinese characters, visited and saw the "keel". They agreed that the knife marks were ancient Chinese characters that they had never seen before. When the queen came, she found that the "keels" were all taken from Xiaotun village in the northwest of Anyang, Henan Province, so she asked the merchants to go directly to that village to buy more "keels". This small village was originally the seat of the last capital of the Shang Dynasty, and the Shang Dynasty moved the capital many times. It was called "Yin" at that time, so later generations called the era after the ancient dynasty moved its capital to Yin for more than 200 years "Yin Shang".
Oracle Bone Inscriptions's discovery was caused by many coincidences. If Wang didn't suffer from malaria, if he wasn't an ancient philologist, if he wasn't a doctor who prescribed too many prescriptions, and if he didn't crush the "keel" into powder for sale according to the usual practice, I'm afraid that the oldest written remains of great value to the study of the history of ancient civilization in China will be missed and never recovered.
What needs special introduction here is that Wang is not only an honest official, but also a great patriot. 1894+65438 After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, he asked the emperor to send him back to his hometown in Shandong for Yong ying in order to fight to the death with the invading army. Later, the Qing government signed a peace treaty with Japan, and he deeply regretted "not doing something for the country." 1900 In August, Eight-Nation Alliance invaded Beijing, and Wang was appointed as the Yong ying minister of Beijing Normal University. /kloc-in August of 0/3, he led the army to reject the enemy at Dongbianmen, and was finally defeated by the houses because he was outnumbered. On August 15, he said to his family, "I can't be ungrateful!" "Then he wrote a desperate sentence in regular script and hung it on the wall:" The master is worried about humiliating me, and the master humiliates me to death. I will soon know what it is. " So he and his wife and eldest daughter-in-law calmly threw themselves into the well. In less than a year, he discovered Oracle Bone Inscriptions. He didn't leave any research words about Oracle Bone Inscriptions, so he had to, but he couldn't. This is really a sigh! Wang is good at all aspects of calligraphy, most of which he left are seal script, running script and regular script.
The earliest record of Oracle Bone Inscriptions that people see now was written by Liu E, another man who first discovered Oracle Bone Inscriptions. 1903, he published the book "Tieyun Hidden Tortoise", and claimed that more than 40 words had been recognized in the collection of more than 3,000 tortoise shells. It turned out that the correct recognition was 34 words. This is also a great thing, because he was the first to affirm that the tortoise shell was engraved with Chinese characters, and further confirmed that it belonged to the same era as the bronze inscriptions on Zhong Ding in Shang Dynasty.
Oracle Bone Inscriptions and the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt, the Mayan characters in Central America and Sumerian cuneiform characters in the two river basins of West Asia were used almost at the same time, but the latter has all died out, and only Oracle Bone Inscriptions is in the same strain as today's Chinese characters.
Among the more than 10,000 pieces of Oracle bones found in100000, nearly 4,700 words can be seen and about 1800 words have been read. Through the research and textual research of these Oracle Bone Inscriptions, we can understand the historical and cultural situation of Shang Dynasty, such as the royal clan system, agriculture, animal husbandry, astronomical phenomena, system, conquest and so on. Oracle Bone Inscriptions has provided extremely valuable materials for studying the ancient dynastic history of China and the evolution of calligraphy.
Oracle Bone Inscriptions, like other Chinese characters after it, occupies a square space for each character. Oracle Bone Inscriptions's strokes and characters are arranged up and down, left and right, on and off, crossed, interspersed, overlapped, stacked and wound. The arrangement of characters on each piece of Oracle Bone Inscriptions is basically from top to bottom. If there are multiple lines, the lines are arranged from right to left, which is consistent with the writing arrangement of Chinese characters in the next three thousand years.
From Oracle Bone Inscriptions's works, we can see the beauty-seeking psychology of early people in these initial words. Many works are exquisitely carved, which can be called the works of calligraphy masters at that time. It's a pity that their names have not been handed down. There is such a work made of cow bones: the same lines are repeatedly engraved on both sides, all of which are crooked or can't be written; There is only one line, which is particularly neat and delicate, and the text is also done in one go. It's obviously a teacher's demonstration. The calligrapher's teacher is training successors by hand.
The so-called gold in bronze inscriptions is actually bronze, which is the alloy of copper and tin. Bronze inscriptions are written on bronze vessels, wine vessels, water vessels, weapons, musical instruments and mirrors. There are as few as one or two words engraved on a vessel as many as hundreds. There are about 3000 words on various bronzes, of which about 2000 can be interpreted. Many bronze vessels are elaborately made. The words engraved on it are more orderly than Oracle Bone Inscriptions's, and of course they also pursue the rugged beauty of words and lines.
During the Warring States Period (475 BC-22 BC1year), many vassal states simplified the strokes of seal script in their own way, resulting in a variety of characters called "big seal script" by later generations, which is different from the "small seal script" we will introduce below.
At the end of the warring States period, there were only seven vassal States left. After years of melee, Qin Shihuang destroyed the six countries and completed reunification, calling himself the first emperor in order to be immortal. In fact, the Qin dynasty only ruled for forty years and then died. After he ascended the throne, he abolished the fonts that were different from those of Qin, simplified and modified the original fonts of Qin, and made them unified and standardized, which was later called "Xiao Zhuan". Its characteristic is to reduce the image meaning of the previous book style and increase the symbolism of the text. It is more convenient for people to write than before. The lines of Xiao Zhuan are still the same as those of Da Zhuan, with uniform thickness and no pressure, but they pay more attention to the continuity and symmetry between lines in words than Da Zhuan.
The proponent of the Qin Dynasty's switch to Xiao Zhuan was Prime Minister Li Si (? -208 BC). He was also the first calligrapher in China to go down in history. His calligraphy works are full of vigor and arrogance, and have always been regarded as a model of Xiao Zhuan.
In order to show off his national prestige and personal achievements, Qin Shihuang traveled everywhere. When traveling east to Mount Tai, Shandong Province, Li Si was asked to write a memorial, carve it into a stone tablet and stand on the top of the mountain, which is called "Mount Tai carving stone". There are more than 200 words on the stone tablet, but now only 9 words are left, which are hidden in Dian Temple in taian county. The "Taishan Stone Carving" on the left is a rubbings of the original stone. The so-called rubbings are paper transcripts printed on inscriptions and bronzes. The method is to cover the object with a thick layer of paper to make it slightly wet, then dip it in ink with an expansion bag made of cotton wrapped in silk cloth and pat it gently on the paper to make the words appear on the paper. The text is white and the rest is black. Many plates with white characters on a white background in this book are such rubbings.