Ji Zi Calligraphy Dictionary

Since ancient times, Confucius, as the greatest writer and thinker in the history of China, has enjoyed a high reputation all over the world. To commemorate this saint, there are three "caves" in his hometown of Qufu, Shandong Province, namely, Konglin, Kongfu and Kongmiao. Among them, in front of the Confucius Temple, there is a very famous couplet. It is said that this couplet is the masterpiece of Ji Xiaolan, a famous college student in Qing Dynasty. The first link is "mutually assured destruction with the country and prosperity", and the second link is "being a moral saint". The calligraphy of this couplet is magnificent and can be said to be one of the rare masterpieces.

However, if someone carefully observes this couplet, they will find that there are two particularly obvious "typos" in this couplet: the word "rich" in the upper couplet is missing for no reason, while the word "chapter" in the lower couplet is broken at the last vertical position. Because these two characters are not traditional Chinese characters, many people think that this is a typo written by Ji Xiaolan on purpose. So why did Ji Xiaolan, a great scholar in Qing Dynasty, leave these two typos? Is it because he didn't learn Chinese well?

Some people think that Ji Xiaolan made a mistake on purpose, because Ji Xiaolan, the editor-in-chief of Sikuquanshu in Tang Tang, has a very high level of education, so it is impossible not to find these two typos. The reason why these two words are misspelled is because the word "rich" is a little less, which represents Confucius' "rich without top"; The word "Zhang" in the second couplet stands for Confucius' "the article reaches heaven". So many people think that these are the two most cultured typos in China. Is that really the case?

In fact, if we only study it from the perspective of characters, we will find that the two writing methods of "Fu" and "Zhang" were just vulgar writing methods at that time, and these vulgar writing methods were eliminated when Chinese characters were simplified later. In ancient times, these vulgar writing methods were even more popular. For example, by studying the word "Fu" in Song Sijia Calligraphy Dictionary, we can know that among the 15 ways of writing "Fu", there are 8 words without extra points, which shows that at that time, the word "Fu" without extra points was more popular with calligraphers. As for the word "Zhang", it was also marked in Yan's "Ganlu Zishu" in the Tang Dynasty, and the early word "Zhang" was a vulgar word of "Zhang".

On the other hand, the Qing rulers attached great importance to the activities of offering sacrifices to Confucius. If these two words are really misspelled, the emperor of the Qing Dynasty will never allow these two misspelled words to be hung in front of the Confucius House for more than 300 years, because these plaques will be imitated by Confucius temples all over the country, so once they are misspelled, they will affect the face of the emperor of the Qing Dynasty.