In human society, language is the first carrier of information transmission. Communication between people depends on language, but language has a drawback, it is immediacy. Once said, it disappears without a trace, just like a flying goose passing by without leaving a trace, hence the emergence of words. As the second carrier of information transmission, writing is more "durable" than language. The emergence of writing provides the possibility for long-term and long-distance transmission of information.
As one of the four ancient civilizations in the world, the history of Chinese characters has a long history, from the oracle bone inscriptions and bronze inscriptions that took shape to the unified seal script, and then to the official script, official script, etc. with various styles and shapes. Regular script, cursive script, running script, etc. Chinese characters have evolved several times. So, what exactly does the shape of Chinese characters change with? What is the connection between this symbol with special significance and social customs?
1. Pre-Qin ancient characters with realistic pictograms and varied styles
The ancestors of our country, like the ancestors of all nations in the world, did not have writing at the beginning and relied only on oral language. Later, as the language system continued to improve, more and more information needed to be memorized, and writing gradually evolved.
1. Before writing appeared, knotting ropes to record events
In the beginning, human beings were not smart enough to invent writing, but some things in life still needed to be recorded, so they took the lead in inventing them. He invented the "knotting method" between language and writing.
(The ancients knotted ropes to record events)
The so-called "knotting ropes to record events" is recorded in the "Book of Changes·Xici": "In ancient times, people tied ropes to rule, and later generations of saints changed them in writing. "Deed." To put it simply, it means tying a knot on the rope to help remember things. In ancient times, ancestors relied on gathering and hunting to survive. Their lifestyle was very simple, but they still needed to record some things. For example, the weather changes, the number of prey, human memory is limited, using external objects to remember important events is undoubtedly a qualitative leap.
Of course, the knotting here is not just a simple knot on the rope, it is much more complicated, even more complicated than our modern writing. The color, material, thickness, longitude and latitude of the knots all have different meanings. For example, the materials alone include dozens of categories such as animal yarn, bark, straw rope, hemp rope, etc. "The Anthology of Zuo Zhuan of the Spring and Autumn Period" says: "The ancients had no writing, but they had covenants and oaths, and the ropes were used for big things, and the ropes were used for small things... They were also enough to manage each other."
( Method of tying ropes to record events)
For example, this tribe hunted thirty sheep. They first painted the rope red to indicate success, and then knotted it with wool braid. Three small knots meant " Three", the last big knot means "ten". This simple recording method fits the primitive way of life at that time.
2. With the development of social productivity, picture writing appeared
Later, China entered a slave society. In slave society, the large-scale production and labor collaboration model saved a lot of productivity, and these saved productivity can be used to do other things, such as developing handicrafts and commerce. In order to preserve the existing production materials, the previous knotting of ropes to record events was no longer enough, so a new information carrier emerged—pictures and text.
It is recorded in "Hanshu·Yiwenzhi": "King Lu Gong destroyed Confucius's house... and obtained ancient texts... dozens of articles are all in ancient characters." These are legendary ancient texts, including "Pao" Xi's "Dragon Book", Shen Nong's "Ba Sui Book", Huangdi's "Yun Book", Shaohao's "Luan Feng Book" and so on. The strokes of these characters are called "tadpole writing" because they look like tadpoles with thick strokes at the beginning and thin strokes at the end. However, these words only appear in a few strokes in history books and have been lost for a long time. There are no relevant texts to be tested.
The earliest legible characters that appeared in my country were "bone inscriptions", which are pictorial characters carved on animal bones. The earliest writing by our ancestors was not composed of strokes, but rather vivid pictures. For example, "mountain" simply drew the image of a mountain. Common scenes in daily life were briefly drawn as text to record events. It can be said that "calligraphy and painting have the same origin".
Early bone inscriptions mostly recorded social life, for example, showing various actions of people and animals, recording numbers, plants, and various things in nature.
This kind of picture text is relatively simple, more like simple paintings, without complex deep meanings, and mostly directly reflects people's social activities. Social life at that time was not as colorful as it is now, and the pictures were relatively simple, generally expressing picking. , hunting, natural phenomena, etc.
When social life became more and more abundant, simple pictures were no longer enough to express the existing production means and ideological culture, so many ideographic characters appeared in later bone carvings.
The so-called knowing characters are generally a combination of two or more single Chinese characters. For example, a picture of a person holding a weapon in his hand means "attack". The bone inscriptions of this period began to lose their pictorial character and become more symbolic, becoming more like simple symbols, paving the way for the emergence of the next mature text.
3. The Yin Shang Dynasty worshiped ghosts and gods, and the writing of divination and the emergence of oracle bone inscriptions
During the Guangxu period, there was an epigrapher named Wang Yirong. One day he was seeking medical advice. When I was shopping for medicine, I came to Anyang, Henan. The local area is rich in a kind of medicinal material called "dragon bone" that can cure all diseases. When Wang Yirong saw this medicinal material, he keenly discovered that it was a relic engraved with ancient characters. This kind of medicine The characters carved on tortoise shells and animal bones have been rediscovered. This is the "oracle bone inscription".
(Oracle Bone Inscriptions)
As the earliest mature writing in my country, Oracle Bone Inscriptions were unearthed in the Yin Ruins. The main characteristics are belief in history, drinking wine, and respecting ghosts and gods. During the Yin and Shang Dynasties, it was still popular to worship all natural things, such as mountains, rivers, sun, moon and stars. At this time, people did not explore the natural world enough to understand the laws of all things, so these eternal things became merchants. "Emperor" belief.
"Emperor" is the supreme authority in merchants' beliefs. It transcends the existence of all things, looks down on mankind, dominates all social orders in the world, and rules over natural gods. Therefore, humans need to have absolute respect for it.
Businessmen with faith are keen on asking for divination. The objects they ask for divination include gods, earth, humans and ghosts. Generally speaking, it is the control of natural climate, the good and bad luck in the world, as well as the outcome of wars and political power. The question of decline. It is precisely because of the enthusiasm of businessmen to ask for divination that the oracle bone inscriptions, as the characters for divination, came into being.
These symbols used for divination carved on processed tortoise shells and animal bones are "notes and inscriptions" and are also the main part of oracle bone inscriptions. Since oracle bone inscriptions are carved on hard bone with a knife, the strokes are mostly straight lines with uniform thickness. The fonts are straight, solid and powerful, and the fonts are mainly rectangular which is easy to carve.
As an early writing, oracle bone inscriptions still contain some traces of pictograms, and the fonts are a bit immature and simple, but they are still the crystallization of the wisdom of our ancestors.
(Oracle Bone Inscriptions Comparison Table)
4. Texts written on bronze vessels, bronze inscriptions that arose due to sacrifices
After having Oracle Bone Inscriptions as the basis, Bronze inscriptions appeared again. During the Shang and Zhou dynasties, my country's bronze casting technology was already quite mature. In order to use it for cooking and offering sacrifices, craftsmen at that time created a vessel - a tripod. As a sacrificial instrument, the tripod became the carrier of emerging writing, so bronze inscriptions are also called "Zhongdingwen".
The number of gold inscriptions in the Shang Dynasty was relatively small, usually only a few characters. By the Western Zhou Dynasty, the number of characters increased significantly. Later unearthed, Mao Gongding from the period of King Xuan of Zhou Dynasty had as many as 497 characters and covered a wide range of topics including politics, economy, military, culture, and sacrifice.
Among them, the bronze inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty are mostly graphic characters representing clan emblems, so they are more pictorial, with inconsistent stroke thickness, looking simple and natural, more like a pattern. By the end of the Shang Dynasty, longer inscriptions had appeared, and some of the inscriptions at this time had relatively standardized fonts, such as "Xu Si Zi Ding".