History of Chinese Characters in China
China script is one of the oldest scripts in history. It is the oldest and most widely used writing in the world today. Chinese characters are the only ideographic characters in various writing systems in the world today. I'm afraid it's four or five thousand years old, because it was a fairly developed writing system as early as14th century BC. On the earth, only a few scripts are earlier than China scripts. The most famous are the sacred script of ancient Egypt and the cuneiform script of two river basins, which were born from two other ancient cultural origins. Ancient Egyptian characters and cuneiform characters were developed as early as around 3000 BC. They recorded the colorful historical stories of the ancient Egyptian Empire, the ancient Sumerian Dynasty, the Babylonian Dynasty and the ancient Persian Dynasty. However, these two ancient characters were buried under the rolling yellow sand and broken walls as early as AD, and it was the archaeological excavation of modern archaeologists that brought them to light. They are all words in the history museum, and they are all fossils of words. China script is the only historical achievement that has spread to modern times, and it is the oldest birthday girl in the script.
History of China Characters-Origin
oracle bone script
About a century ago, there was an important archaeological discovery in Anyang, China, which was the discovery of Yin Ruins and Oracle Bone Inscriptions. Since then, China's research on the history of Yin and Shang Dynasties has entered a new era. According to Chinese ancient philologists, Oracle Bone Inscriptions is "the earliest and relatively complete writing that can be seen at present". It has always been complicated, and more than 3,000 words have been found, including nouns, pronouns, verbs, auxiliary verbs, adjectives and so on. , but also can form a narrative of more than 170 words. Therefore, scholars affirm that Oracle Bone Inscriptions is by no means the primary stage of my China writing, and it must have developed for a long time before it.
Guo Moruo and Yu, historians and ancient philologists of the older generation in China, once thought that the generation of China characters can be traced back to the Yangshao culture in Banpo 6000 years ago. Guo Moruo thinks that twenty or thirty kinds of inscriptions on the edge of Banpo pottery bowl "should be the primitive stage of Chinese characters". Yu also believes that "these are some simple words produced in the origin stage of words." However, according to some scholars' re-research, it is considered that the Banpo symbol and the carved symbol of Tao Zun in the late Dawenkou culture in Shandong Province "probably have nothing to do with the formation of Chinese characters", and China's "formation process of Chinese characters" is "in the middle of 3000 BC". A eclectic view holds that China characters "germinated among the people" in the late primitive society 6,000 years ago, and "formed a relatively complete writing system" in the middle and late Xia Dynasty 4,000 years ago.
History of China Characters-Evolution of Chinese Characters
History of Chinese Characters in China
The development of Chinese characters from Oracle Bone Inscriptions to today has a history of more than 3,000 years. The development of Chinese characters has gone through several stages, such as inscriptions on bronze, big seal script, small seal script, official script, cursive script, regular script and running script. The passage time of these fonts is sometimes not completely divided, but parallel or cross.
Bronze inscriptions, also known as Zhong Dingwen and inscriptions, are written on bronzes. It appeared on bronzes in the late Shang Dynasty and developed in the Western Zhou Dynasty. Generally speaking, the inscriptions on bronzes in the late Shang Dynasty are no more than 50 words, and the characters cast on Mao in the late Western Zhou Dynasty are as long as 497 words. At present, there are more than 10000 pieces of Shang and Zhou bronzes unearthed. According to the statistics of the Collection of Jinwen compiled by Rong Geng, an ancient philologist, there are more than 3,000 words * * *, of which more than 2,000 words have been recognized. The shape of bronze inscriptions is very similar to that of Oracle Bone Inscriptions, which is basically a glyph.
By the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, great changes had taken place in China's society, the economy and culture flourished, and the application of characters became more and more extensive. At this time, the characters tend to be simplified, and the various vassal States have formed a situation of "different sounds and different characters" because of disunity. Generally speaking, the State of Qin uses the big seal script, and the six countries use the "ancient prose of the six countries". The ancient prose of the Six Kingdoms is also a kind of "seal script". The meaning of seal script is to lengthen the strokes and become a soft long line. In 22 1 year BC, Qin Shihuang unified China, unified the national writing, currency and weights and measures, and stipulated the national standard font. Qin Shihuang ordered Li Si and others to sort out the characters and change the fonts. Li Si wrote the standard font Cang Zhuan Pian, Zhao Gao wrote Love Calendar and Hu Wujing wrote Bo Xue Pian, so that the whole country can write in their simplified fonts. This is Xiao Zhuan.
Xiao Zhuan was gradually replaced by a more convenient and simplified official script. It is said that official script was originally used by the lowly people at the lower level. At that time, "official script" meant "apprentice". Originally, the simple official script was written for them. Later, it was widely used among the people and became popular. Even the ruling class had to write in this language, which became the official writing method of the whole country in the Han Dynasty. The Han tablet handed down now is written in this kind of official script.
Official script later evolved into cursive script. This is a fast style of official script, which has developed into an independent font since the Eastern Han Dynasty. At the same time, cursive script appeared in regular script, also known as "official script" or "original script", which matured in the Eastern Han Dynasty and prevailed in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. A font that finally appeared at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty is running script, which basically looks like regular script and can be said to be a tribe of regular script. Regular script, running script and cursive script have been handed down to this day.
History and Characteristics of Chinese Characters in China
History of Chinese Characters in China
Chinese characters originated from pictures and evolved from the original pictures. Like painting, not painting, like personality, so we call it portrait. After more than 3,000 years of gradual evolution, hieroglyphics have evolved from hieroglyphics to Oracle Bone Inscriptions → Dazhuan → Xiaozhuan → Lishu … to regular script, and now to computer fonts. Picture characters have become large-scale Chinese characters with simplified strokes.
Chinese characters were created by the ancient working people in China in the long-term social practice. Chinese characters have a unique and lofty position in the world writing system. First of all, Chinese characters are the most widely used characters in the world. The popularity of a written language depends on the size of the area it passes through and the number of people who use it. China has the third largest territory in the world with a population of more than one billion, of which more than 80% is Chinese, which is unmatched by any written language in the world.
Secondly, Chinese characters are one of the oldest characters in the world. Historians tell us that there are two kinds of the oldest characters in the world, one is cuneiform, which is more than 5,500 years ago, and the other is Egyptian hieroglyphics, which is about 4 100 years ago. As for our Chinese characters, we can see from the archaeological data in recent years that the history of Chinese characters can be traced back to five or six thousand years ago, and the life span of Chinese characters is the longest, and we still use them today.
Another notable feature of Chinese characters is their independent creation and development. We can know that most of them are transformed from the pinyin of other nationalities. On the other hand, Chinese characters are hieroglyphs developed from pictures. In the course of its development, Egyptian hieroglyphics took a different road from Egyptian characters, and eventually became phonetic letters and developed into phonetic symbols. Chinese characters, on the other hand, are based on hieroglyphics, which combine sound, line (shape) and meaning in an original way and become a colorful writing system.
Because Chinese characters are widely used and have a long history, the precious heritage of our nation has been preserved by them. Including philosophy, science, history and literature, represents all the crystallization of our national culture. Through Chinese characters, we can see the situation more than 3000 years ago and hear a hundred schools of thought contend more than 2000 years ago. In a word, Chinese characters have made great contributions to the inheritance of our national culture. At the same time, Chinese characters are the only characters that can become works of art. Chinese characters are developed from pictures and become a kind of line characters. The structure of lines can express a kind of composition beauty. Therefore, Chinese characters can not only record Chinese, but also become high-level works of art. There are famous calligraphers throughout the ages, such as Cai Yong's stereotyped writing in Han Dynasty, Wang Xizhi's cursive writing in Jin Dynasty and Zhang Xu's crazy writing in Tang Dynasty. In the history of our country, calligraphy and painting are equally famous. Although the scripts of other nationalities also pay attention to the handwork of calligraphy, no nation lists calligraphy as a work of art.
History of China Characters-Oracle Bone Inscriptions
oracle bone script
Oracle Bone Inscriptions was discovered in the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty more than 100 years ago. (Producer) Wang was seriously ill and sought medical advice everywhere. He happened to find a tortoise shell engraved with words in medicinal materials and thought it was a valuable antique, so he sent someone here to search for it. It turned out that these tortoise shells were picked up by farmers in Anyang, Henan Province and sold to Chinese medicine shops. Later, after research, it was found that the lines on the tortoise shell should be ancient characters. This discovery caused a sensation in the academic and cultural circles. Oracle Bone Inscriptions is the earliest China script we have found so far. It was carved on tortoise shells or animal bones in Shang Dynasty. These words are mainly used to predict good luck or bad luck. In the process of divination, the tortoise shell was burned first, and cracks appeared on the tortoise shell. People in Shang Dynasty predicted good or bad luck according to cracks, and recorded divination and results on tortoise shells. These words carved on tortoise shells or animal bones are called "Oracle Bone Inscriptions".
History of China-Jinwen
Ancient bronze inscriptions
The custom of casting inscriptions on bronzes became popular in the late Shang Dynasty and reached its peak in the Zhou Dynasty. The pre-Qin dynasty called copper gold, so later generations called the words on ancient bronzes bronze inscriptions. Because Zhong and Ding played an important role in various bronze inscriptions in the Zhou Dynasty, they were also called "Zhong Dingwen". The application of bronze inscriptions lasted for more than 1200 years from the early Shang Dynasty to the Qin Dynasty's destruction of the Six Kingdoms. Like modern cast iron products, bronzes are usually cast in clay models, which are called "Fan Tao". Bronze inscriptions are pre-carved and then cast on the Fan Tao, and a few are directly carved after bronze casting. Because Fan Tao is soft, it is easier to carve than tortoise shells and animal bones, and the early bronze inscriptions are stronger than Oracle Bone Inscriptions's pictures, which are closer to the original characters.
History of China Characters-Biography
Seal character
"Turn" is originally a combination of small turn and big turn. Because it is customary to call Wen Zhuan Da Zhuan, later generations often call him "Wen Zhuan". Xiao Zhuan, also known as Qin Zhuan, is a font that was omitted from Da Zhuan. It originated in the Qin State at the end of the Warring States Period and prevailed in the Qin Dynasty and the early Western Han Dynasty. During the Warring States period, countries were separated, and their characters were not uniform and their fonts were quite complicated. So Qin Shihuang unified the world characters with Qin characters, abolished various forms different from Qin characters in six countries, omitted and deleted the original characters of Qin, and absorbed some simplified and popular fonts from folk characters and standardized them, forming a new font-Xiao Zhuan.
China characters developed to the stage of Xiao Zhuan, and gradually began to finalize the outline, strokes and structure. The pictographic meaning is weakened, which makes the characters more symbolic and reduces the confusion and difficulty of writing and human reading. This is also the product of the first large-scale use of administrative means to standardize writing in the history of China. The Qin Dynasty unified the national characters with the sorted seal script, which not only basically eliminated the phenomenon of different lines of characters in different places, but also greatly changed the situation of different fonts in ancient Chinese, and played an important role in the development history of China characters. In addition to Xiao Zhuan, it also includes Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Jinwen, collectively referred to as Chinese characters; The development of ancient philology had a great influence on the study of ancient history, philosophy, economy, law, culture, science and technology in China.
History of China Characters-Da Zhuan
big seal character
History of Chinese Characters in China
In the late Western Zhou Dynasty, Chinese characters developed into Da Zhuan. The development of seal script has produced two characteristics: first, the lines with uneven thickness in the early days became uniform and soft, and the lines they drew with utensils were very concise and vivid; Second, standardization, the glyph structure tends to be neat, and gradually deviates from the original shape of the picture, laying the foundation for the square characters. The big seal is for the later small seal. In a broad sense, Da Zhuan includes Xiao Zhuan, pre-Oracle Bone Inscriptions, bronze inscriptions and six-country scripts. The big seal script here refers to the Qin script that prevailed during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. With the eastward move to Luoyang, Qin occupied the hometown of the Western Zhou Dynasty, and at the same time inherited the writing of the Western Zhou Dynasty, which was developed on the basis of inheriting the bronze inscriptions. Regional, some are difficult to identify.
Dazhuan, also known as Zhuan (zhòu) text. It was named after it was recorded in Shi Shuo pian. History of Han Dynasty: "Fifteen poems, printed by Mrs. Shu of Zhou Shi." There are 225 Shuo Wen, which was collected by Xu Shen on the basis of nine Shi Shuo, and it is the main material for us to study Da Chuan today.
The original seal script is generally considered as "Shi Guwen". At the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, in the south of Chencang (now Baoming, Shaanxi Province) in Tianxing County, ten drum-shaped stone piers were originally unearthed, which were about three feet in diameter, small on the top and large on the bottom, flat on the top and shaped like steamed buns. It is engraved with ten four-character poems written by Qin Xiangong in the eleventh year, which is the earliest stone inscription in China. Lost and found, lost again. More than 700 words were originally engraved, and more than 300 words are now in existence. These ten stone cities exist in the Forbidden City. Because the content recorded the hunting, it was named "Hunting or Carving Stones Forever". Wei, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, thought this stone was shaped like a drum, so he renamed it "Shi Guwen". Now he is the representative of Da Zhuan.
Shi Guwen has a vigorous and dignified style. The font structure is neat, the strokes are even and round, horizontal and vertical, and the shape tends to be square. Da Zhuan largely retains the writing style of the late Western Zhou Dynasty, but slightly changes, making the strokes more neat and symmetrical. The strokes are round. The lines are more uniform than the bronze inscriptions, and the lines have reached a complete level, with no obvious unevenness in thickness. The body structure is more neat than the bronze inscriptions, and it began to get rid of the shackles of hieroglyphics, laying the foundation for square Chinese characters. There are few variants on the same object. The font is complex, the radicals often overlap, and writing is inconvenient.
History of Chinese Characters in China-Lishu
official script
Although the seal script is a relatively neat rectangle and its structure is composed of even and round lines, it is quite inconvenient to write and the font is more complicated. Due to various shortcomings, a new type of font appeared quickly among the people, which used square folds to write the dignified, neat, round and curved lines of Xiao Zhuan. It is said that this font was very popular among lower-level officials, craftsmen and slaves at that time, so it was called "official script". In the Han Dynasty, official script replaced Xiao Zhuan as the main font, and the development history of China characters broke away from the ancient writing stage and entered the official script stage. After the Han Dynasty, Xiao Zhuan became an ancient font mainly used for carving seals and bronze inscriptions. The formation of official script changed the characters following the shape of objects into simplified Chinese characters composed of straight strokes, which greatly improved the writing speed. China script changed from seal script to official script, which is called "official script change". The official script reform is an important turning point in the development of China characters, ending the stage of ancient Chinese characters and making China characters enter a more stereotyped stage. After the official script was changed to official script, the characters are close to the existing characters and easier to identify than the ancient characters.
History of China Characters-Cursive Script
cursive script
Cursive script is a scribbled and fast font. Cursive script is a simple font used to assist official script, which is mainly used for drafting manuscripts and communication. During the formation of cursive script, government assistants and historians often need to use drafting documents, which affects the circulation of cursive script. After entering the Eastern Han Dynasty, after the processing of literati and calligraphers, cursive script has a more regular and rigorous shape, which can be used in some official occasions, called "Cao Zhang", which has a little taste of official script and retains the strokes and brushwork of official script. Because cursive script is too simple and easy to be confused with each other, it cannot replace official script as the main font. After the appearance of regular script, cursive script developed further on the basis of regular script. Not only strokes can be linked, but also strokes can be linked up and down. Some features of Lishu strokes have also disappeared, forming another cursive script called "Today Grass".
History of China Characters-Running Script
Semi-cursive/running/calligraphy (China's calligraphy)
Running script is a font between regular script and cursive script, which is neither neat nor bold. If regular script is like a person sitting and cursive running, then running script is a person walking, because running script is more casual and faster than regular script, and unlike cursive script, it is the most popular among people. Running script probably began to be popular among the people from the Wei and Jin Dynasties. Wang Xizhi, a great calligrapher in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, is known as the "sage of calligraphy" and has created a large number of running script works, which have long been loved by people. Running script has no strict writing rules. If it is written regularly and close to regular script, it is called true line or regular script. What is written is a little indulgent, with a strong cursive flavor, so it is called cursive script, which is faster than regular script and not as difficult to distinguish people (recognize) as cursive script, so it has high practical value.
History of Chinese Characters in China-Regular Script
regular script
From the perspective of font structure, regular script is similar to official script, but it changes the writing method of official script strokes, from flat official script to basic square regular script, which is called "square character". Regular script is also called official script and original script, which shows that regular script is a regular script for people to learn and use. The earliest regular script writer was Zhong You in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. In his handed down works, the brushwork of official script is still reserved. Regular script experienced many changes in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, and was basically finalized after Sui and Tang Dynasties. After the script is finalized, it is quite exquisite and rigorous in strokes and structure, such as the works of Ou Yangxun, a famous calligrapher in the Tang Dynasty.
After China characters entered the regular script stage, the font continued to be simplified, but the font changed little. Printing, as one of the four great inventions in China, uses regular script as the main font for printing books. In the Song Dynasty, the regular script was refined to make it more regular and beautiful, and it was called "Song Style". Later, it was called "Song Style Imitation".
The fonts used in books and newspapers we read today are generally variations of this style.