It is said that the official script was created by Cheng Miao, a calligrapher of the Qin Dynasty. Cheng Miao was originally a minor official in a prison. He was ordered to be imprisoned for offending Qin Shihuang. In prison, he compiled and created 3,000 official scripts, and received Qin Shihuang's approval, so the calligrapher Cai Yong said to him: delete the ancient prose and establish the official script. The specific formation process is as follows:
It is said that the official script is also called the official script because there were many prison affairs in the Qin Dynasty, and the prison officials needed to write more documents. The official script created by Cheng Miao was precisely for the purpose of prison. It is more convenient to write documents.
However, judging from the information unearthed today, official script had already appeared in the Warring States period before the Qin Dynasty. It only developed rapidly in the Qin Dynasty. Cheng Miao may have only organized and standardized the official script. , it reached its peak in the Han Dynasty, especially the Eastern Han Dynasty.
Ink writing during the Western Han Dynasty was mainly written on bamboo slips and silk. The earliest silk script of the Han Dynasty that we see now is "Laozi Yiyi" unearthed from the Mawangdui Han Tomb in Changsha, Hunan. At this time, the official script no longer had the structure in the seal script. The circles in the seal script began to change into square folds, the distance between the horizontal strokes began to shrink, and the font structure began to become flat.
The official script of the Eastern Han Dynasty presented two aspects, one was ink writing on bamboo slips and silk scripts, and the other was calligraphy carved on stone.