1980 A number of pits and tombs in the Warring States Period were excavated in Qingchuan County, Sichuan Province. Two wooden slips were found among the unearthed cultural relics. One of the wooden slips has three lines of calligraphy, and the handwriting is still legible. Calligraphy belongs to the early official script. According to textual research, it was written in the second year of Qin Wuwang in the Warring States Period (309 BC), 88 years before Qin Shihuang unified China (22 BC1year). There are many differences between the calligraphy on this wooden slip and the inscriptions of Zhong Ding at that time and before. Its characteristics are: reducing buckling, simplifying complexity and gradually smoothing. The glyph has gradually changed from long and narrow to square or flat, and some characters have the embryonic form of "Swallowtail of Silkworm Head" with wave potential. Such as nine, four, fresh, Tianjin, then, month, eye, ruler, energy and other words, it embodies the above characteristics. Although this kind of calligraphy is basically a seal script structure, it contains more strokes of official script, and the strokes are relatively sketchy. 1975 The characters of "Qin Li" (also called "Guli") on bamboo slips unearthed in Yunmeng County, Hubei Province are roughly similar to those on wooden slips in Qingchuan, Sichuan. Therefore, some people speculate that Lishu originated from the pre-Qin and Warring States periods, and evolved from Dazhuan. In the Qin Dynasty, when the big seal script was changed to the small seal script, the official script created in the Warring States period was further sorted out before it developed into the "Qin official script".
Mr. Pan Liangzhen once wrote the article "The art of official script and its role in the evolution of calligraphy" in the study of calligraphy. He believes that the origin of official script can not be attributed to the creation of one person, and that Cheng Miao's view of official script is incorrect. The appearance of official script is undoubtedly the result of long-term writing practice of ancient ancestors, and writing is the tool and product of social practice. The appearance of official script is by no means the result of one person behind closed doors, nor is it an overnight event. If all the Yin Ruins from Oracle Bone Inscriptions to Xiao Zhuan belong to the seal script system, it can be said that Yin, Zhou and Qin were the times of seal script, and official script was the popular standard font in Han Dynasty, but its appearance can be traced back to a long time ago. As a simplified font of seal script, grass seal script appeared as early as the seal script era, which gave birth to the bud of official script. Professor Yang Kuan concluded in the book History of Warring States that "before the unification of Qin Shihuang, both Xiao Zhuan and Li Shu actually existed" and pointed out that Cao Zhuan can also be called "ancient". Therefore, it can be considered that official script is gradually developed in the matrix of seal script. In recent years, the Qin and Han bamboo slips unearthed in Yunmeng Shuihudi, Hubei Province, Mawangdui, Changsha, Hunan Province and the Western Han bamboo slips unearthed in Yinhuan Mountain, Linyi, Shandong Province also have traces of the process from seal script (grass seal script) to official script. The official script was really completed and established as a standard font in the Han Dynasty. Compared with seal script, in the font structure, official script mainly changes the winding arc of palindrome into straight line, and the radicals are greatly simplified.
On a solid foundation, the art of official script has experienced the painstaking research of countless calligraphers before and after, and has an important position and role in the history of calligraphy art in China. Because of this, the dispute over the origin of official script has aroused many people's interest and concern, and uncovering the mystery of the origin of official script will play a beneficial role in the prosperity and development of calligraphy art in China.