The influence of witchcraft and religion on the origin of Chinese art from the primitive colored pottery?

History of Chinese Calligraphy (Preface)

Source: China Art Net Time: 2008-08-29 Browse Size: Big Middle Small

The history of Chinese calligraphy should be counted from when some people think that it must have reached a high level of self-conscious creation is the source of the history, then the creation of calligraphy should be in the Han Dynasty. But we believe that since the beginning of Chinese characters, it has already left spontaneity and entered into conscious creation. Although there is no literature on calligraphy, from the design of Chinese characters, to the analysis of the form and writing, there is a whole set of systematic, non-contradictory theories that can solve the problems that may be encountered, or else it will not be possible to explain the high level of achievement of the Chinese characters.

The birth of writing was a sign of mankind's departure from barbarism to the age of civilization and rationality - "the transition to civilization through the invention of writing and its application to documentation". As the carrier of Chinese culture, the creation of Chinese characters announced the beginning of Chinese civilization, and at the same time, the unique cultural and aesthetic psychological structure of the Han people has given rise to the unique art of calligraphy in the Chinese characters themselves.

The origin of Chinese characters has been recorded in various ancient texts. Zhouyi - the Department of Rhetoric, said: "The ancient Fu Xi's king of the world, up to look at the image in the sky, down to look at the law in the ground, look at the birds and beasts of the text and the ground of the appropriate, close to the body, far from all things, and so began to make eight trigrams, in order to pass the virtue of the gods, in order to classify the situation of all things." And: "the ancient rule by knotted rope, the saint easy to book deed." Zheng Xuan note: "knotted rope for about, things big, big knot its rope; things small, small knot its rope." From the standpoint of the history of text development, in the oracle bone character system before the emergence of a long period of history before the text, rope, gossip is obviously refers to this historical period within the meaning of the former text of the alternative symbols. But whether it is the knot rope or gossip can not really exercise the function of the text tool. Knotted rope of non-expressive it can only help to remember and can not express the idea of gossip through a high degree of generalization of natural phenomena, extracted eight symbols were symbolic of the sky, earth, thunder, wind, water, fire, mountains, ze, and through the eight symbols of the symbols of the evolution of the changes to reveal the laws of nature, the movement of the community, which makes the gossip in the ideological aspects of the knotted rope than a great step further. But gossip itself pan-natural symbols of symbols nature so that it only has to express the function of class concepts, and can not be from the text unit level and the reality of language correspondence. As a result, gossip is still a far cry from the ideograms of the written word.

In the middle and late Warring States period, "Cangjie's theory of creating characters" was widely popular and had a great influence on later generations. Xunzi - Xiezhi (Xunzi-解蔽), said: "There are many people who make books, but Cangjie is the only one who passes them on. Han Fei Zi - Five Dangerous Things: "Cangjie's book is also called private and public by the one who has a ring around himself and the one who has a private back". "As a system of conventional symbols, writing originated from the need for intergroup thinking and communication in human society, and could not be created by a single person. The legend of Cangjie's creation of characters at most indicates that Cangjie, as the historian of the Yellow Emperor, had the merit of collecting and organizing characters. As the ancient writing was monopolized by the witch history, it became the medium of the Jedi to the sky, thus causing the creation of word worship, and then attributed the creation of words to the creation of a person with divine endowment: the birth of words was also given a magical and grotesque color: "(Cangjie) dragon face is extravagant, four eyes are bright, really wise and virtuous, and was born to be able to write 。。。。。。 So the poor change of the earth, look up to see the Quixing round curve of the situation, look down to see the turtle bird feathers mountains and rivers, the palm and create the text, the sky for the rain chestnut, ghosts for the night cry, the dragon is hidden. "In fact, the text is the appearance of the language: any national text, and language, is the same as the working people in the labor of life: from scratch, from few to many, from many attempts to the agreed upon gradually nurtured, selected and refined unearthed. It is never the product of one person at a time, it develops with the development of society and has a long history.

Putting aside all the myths and legends about the origin of Chinese characters, the origin of Chinese characters can be traced back to about 4,000 B.C.E. to the semipo and Yangshao pottery engraved with symbols based on the earliest existing primitive textual data. From the point of view of Yangshao pottery engraved symbols from the half-slope, these engraved symbols have some kind of abstract ideological nature, rather than a realistic depiction of plants and animals in the natural world; most of these engraved symbols are engraved on the black wide band and black triangular pattern along the outer edge of the potter's bowl, the structure is simple, mostly a single combination of lines. Guo Moruo believes that: "the meaning of the carving has not yet been clarified, but is undoubtedly a symbol with the nature of the text. Such as the flower bets or clan emblems and so on. China's later artifacts, whether it is pottery, bronze or other finished products there are things to le the tradition of the name of the work, especially in the Yin Dynasty bronzes on some of the emblem of the engraving of the text, and these symbols are very similar. From the latter to the former example, as from the lower reaches of the Yellow River to trace the sea of Xingxiu, those painted marks on the colored pottery, can be said with certainty is the origin of the Chinese writing, or the original Chinese writing of the relics.

While the Yangshao half-slope pottery lacks the rich composition of spatial modeling from the standpoint of writing, the abstract grasp of the line shows the sophistication of the consciousness in terms of the aesthetic experience of the forefathers, and the meaningful form of the line to achieve the transcendence of the reality of nature is a more indicative of the degree of liberalization achieved in the field of aesthetic practice. "Line and color are the two main factors in the plastic arts, color being the more primitive aesthetic form than the other, due to the fact that the perception of color has the natural reaction of animal nature as its immediate basis. This is not the case with line, for which the feeling, the comprehension of mastery is much more indirect and difficult: it requires a much more conceptual, imaginative, and comprehending component and capacity." So, one ponders - while the Yangshao semiplano pottery inscriptions themselves were the earliest indication of the forefathers' contemplation of existence, their unveiling of the essential meaning of the Chinese characters also implicitly dictated the aesthetic-cultural choice of the Chinese characters' abstract ideograms.

Following the inscribed symbols of Yangshao half-slope pottery, the hieroglyphic symbols of Dawenkou and Longshan of 5000 B.C.E. show the evolutionary form of Chinese characters--"not necessarily in the same vein of evolution, with a markedly strengthened sense of stylized consciousness, like the ' '' '-style pottery symbols already have complex spatial structures and stylistic relationships such as balance and symmetrical proportions." The character for mountain was interpreted as "Dan" by Yu Shenwu, who believed that the upper part of the character "O" resembled the shape of the sun, the middle " " resembled the shape of clouds and air, and the lower part " " resembled the shape of a mountain with five peaks. "like a mountain with five peaks. 。。。。。。 The clouds on the mountain support the rising sun, which is the scene of the morning Danming is like a picture. Tanglan interpreted it as "heat", that the top is the sun, the middle is fire, the bottom is the mountain, like the sun irradiation, the mountain is on fire, is a semantic symbols on behalf of the text. This indicates that the Dawenkou pictographs have surpassed the purely ideographic stage of the half-slope carvings and have entered the new period of the historical development of the pictographs.

From the Yangshao pottery inscriptions of the half-slope to the hieroglyphic symbols of the Dawenkou and then to the oracle-bone character system, the Chinese characters took a road from abstraction to hieroglyphics and then to abstraction. This defines the abstract character of Chinese characters, and thus prevents Chinese characters from falling into the danger of being reduced to paintings during the pre-script history because of the overly monotonous effort to pictorialize the inscribed symbols. In the history of the development of writing, there has always been a saying that "calligraphy and painting have the same origin", but this notion avoids and ignores the historical fact of the early development of the Chinese character, and only takes note of a certain kind of appearance in the early history of the development of the Chinese character, which is therefore not in line with the historical fact of the origin of the Chinese character. As a matter of fact, from the very beginning, Chinese characters and paintings have taken two diametrically opposite paths. In the pre-script period of Yangshao and Hanpo, the abstract character of Chinese characters was already revealed, while the realistic tendency of paintings was also fully revealed in the same period. For example, the realistic painting image of human face with fish pattern, holding hands and dancing in a group is in sharp contrast with the abstraction and simplicity of the pottery engraving.

Of course, it is undeniable that Chinese characters relied on pictorialization to get rid of their existential crisis in the pre-script period. With the development of society, people's field of knowledge was expanding, and the level of thinking and language was also improving, and many new things and concepts had to be reflected through language and text, which put the carved characters in a difficult situation, and the only way out of the situation was to rely on hieroglyphs to expand the word categories. In the early development of Chinese characters, pictographization constituted an important turning point, which provided a channel for the expansion and proliferation of Chinese characters on the basis of their abstract ideograms, thus enabling the establishment of a pictographic system of ideograms in Chinese characters. According to Guo Moruo, "the origin of Chinese characters should be summarized into two systems: the referential system and the hieroglyphic system. The referential system should have occurred before the pictogram system. The system of fingerprinting should have occurred before the pictogram system, and fingerprinting should have preceded pictogramming, that is, random carving preceded drawing". This understanding is undoubtedly in line with the historical facts of the origin of Chinese characters.

This cultural model of pictograms and ideograms has supported the long development of Chinese characters from the semiprecious pottery inscriptions to the oracle-bone inscriptions, and at the same time, it has also given birth to the unique art of calligraphy within the parent body of the Chinese characters. Within the scope of the world's scripts, ancient Babylonian and ancient Egyptian scripts went through a hieroglyphic stage from 4000 to 5000 B.C.E. The reason why these two ancient hieroglyphic scripts disintegrated after A.D.E. was that their pure hieroglyphic form could not be supported by abstract ideograms, and they were reduced to paintings that accurately depicted the objective objects of nature. Although the Western phonetic scripts, represented by ancient Greek, were not dissimilar to the early Chinese characters in terms of abstraction, they lacked independent spatial modeling and compositional variations in writing, and thus lacked the possibility of affinity with the art of calligraphy. The reason why Chinese characters can become the material for the art of calligraphy lies in the fact that the pictograms of Chinese characters transcend the objective objects being modeled and acquire independent symbolic meanings. "A character expresses not only an object or objects, but also often a class of facts or processes, including also subjective meanings, demands and expectations." This abstraction of intensification prevented Chinese characters from falling into the quagmire of realistic painting. At the same time, the abstraction of Chinese characters is based on hieroglyphics, so that the thousands of forms of nature provide an inexhaustible textual schema for Chinese characters, which constitutes the material basis of the art of calligraphy.

While the semipo pottery inscriptions and the Dawenkou hieroglyphics provide us with various historical bases for the origin of Chinese characters, and the abstract character of the semipo inscriptions is sufficient to enable us to gain sufficient understanding of the nature of Chinese characters to effectively clear up all the erroneous concepts that have been shrouded in the issue of the origin of Chinese characters, from the standpoint of the history of the development of writing, the semipo pottery inscriptions and even the Dawenkou hieroglyphics are not yet mature enough to constitute the form of Chinese characters. However, from the standpoint of the history of script development, the Half Slope pottery inscriptions and even the Da Wenkou pictographs are not mature enough to be recognized as Chinese characters. In contrast to the Half Slope pottery inscriptions, the oracle bone inscriptions, which appeared in the 11th century B.C., show the full maturity of the Chinese characters, and thus, in the history of calligraphy, the oracle bone inscriptions are regarded as the first generation of self-contained Chinese character symbolic system.

In 1899, the oracle bone inscriptions were unearthed in the Yin ruins in Anyang, Henan Province, which became a cultural event that shocked the world in the 19th century. As a result, the prospects for the study of the history of ancient calligraphy were greatly expanded. The oracle bone inscriptions, as the divination records of the royal family of Yin and Shang, recorded the historical facts from Pan Geng's relocation to Yin to the demise of Yin and Shang for eight generations and twelve kings***273 years (1395 BCE-1123 BCE).

During the Yin-Shang period, Chinese society had entered the era of slavery, and the ruling class, in order to maintain their rule, established hierarchical social regulations on the basis of primitive witchcraft rituals. In the ideological realm, "the culture of witchcraft and history, with rituals as its banner and ancestor sacrifices as its core, began to take on a strong religious character. It is characterized by the primitive universal rituals of witchcraft into a part of the slave masters monopolized the hierarchical rules of social domination, the end of the primitive society of the full-time sorcerer into the slave masters of religious and political slaughter".

Divination is actually a remnant of primitive totem worship. In the prehistory, due to the weakness of the people in the face of the might of nature, feel that there is some kind of supernatural power in the underworld to dominate their own destiny - God - the personality of God is the product of people's minds fantasize. People worshipped and begged for God's blessing. The rulers of the Yin and Shang Dynasty practiced divination and almost always took possession of everything. Since the king of the Shang appointed himself as the son of the God of Heaven, he had to pray to Heaven for everything, and communicating with people and gods became a major political activity in his daily life. "The rulers, when practicing their will, often adhered to the will of the heavens, and made use of divination, a mysterious and bizarre form of sorcery-religion, to put forward their ideals, foretell the future, fabricate fantasies about themselves, and describe the rule of the class as the will of the heavens. As a result, in divination, the turtle from and divination from are the most important, overriding any other aspects and factors including the will and requirements of the emperor himself." For example, consider the content of some of the following divination texts, "Thou then hast great doubts, seeks and Naixin, seeks and Secretary seeks and commoner, seeks and divination 。。。。。。。 You then from. Turtle from, divination from, the Secretary against, the common people against, auspicious. The minister follows, the tortoise follows, the diviner follows, you go against, the common people go against, auspicious. The common people, the tortoise, the diviner, and the minister, are in opposition to each other, and the common people are in opposition to each other. The tortoise, the diviner, the minister, and the common people are all in favor of the internal and the external. Tortoise divination **** against the people, with quiet auspicious, for use in the evil."

In the field of Yin and Shang culture, primitive religion occupies an absolute dominant position, compared to the moral and political ethical system has not been fully established in the ideological field. The so-called major events of the state were in the rituals and ron. "Thus, the relationship between nature and human society is only linked by religious consciousness, the outline nodes of its understanding, showing no social division of labor, and again surrendering concepts collectively to the divine domination of God."

The oracle bone inscriptions, as the first generation of a mature system of written symbols, established the order of calligraphy in the complete meaning of the orthography, chapter, and penmanship, thus enabling calligraphy as an art style to gain effective independence. Compared with the barrenness of hieroglyphic symbols and the lack of spatial sense of the semipoetal inscriptions, the oracle bones already have a stable spatial structure and a sense of penmanship, which is the prerequisite for the creation of a sense of rhythm in calligraphy.

The symbol system established by the oracle bone script according to the principle of abstract representation maintains the abstract character of the half-slope inscribed lines, and establishes a stable spatial structure on this basis. The oracle bones as symbols have established a complete correspondence with the real language, but the words themselves have gained a development path independent of the meaning of the symbols. That is to say, the oracle bone inscriptions elevate the "meaningful form" of the semipoise inscriptions, which contains the collective unconscious, to a more evolved form. As an abstract symbol, the Yangshao Half-slope Pottery inscriptions reflect the subjective perception of the forefathers on the objective nature and the cosmic consciousness in the form of the rhythm of "line". However, because the Yangshao half-slope inscribed symbols are still in the pre-literal period, the revelation of the cosmic consciousness and the subject's mental image is still in a disordered state, i.e., as a ''meaningful form'', it has not yet established a deep cultural connotation and a stable spatial schema of pictorial representation, which limits to a large extent its semantic function and weakens its semantic function, This has largely limited and weakened its semantic and visual expression functions. The secret of the oracle-bone inscriptions that created the independent development of Chinese calligraphy lies in the fact that they gradually transformed the pictorial simulation into pure abstract lines and structures, and put the spatiality of the structures into the temporality of the lines, so that this spatial-temporalization constitutes the essence of the artistic expression of calligraphy.

In 1933, Dong Zuobin, in his book "Examples of the Study of Oracle Bone Scripts", took one lineage, two titles, three chaste people, four pits, five square countries, six characters, seven types of events, eight grammars, nine glyphs, ten calligraphic styles, ten conditions as the criterion for the break of the generation, and thus divided the stylistic evolution of the oracle-bone scripts into five phases, with the first phase being Pan Geng, Xiao Xin, Xiao B, Wu Ding; the second phase Zu Geng, Zu A; the third phase Gao Xin, Kang Ding; and the fourth phase Gao Xin, Kang Ding; and the third phase Gao Xin, Kang Ding. GG and Kanding; the fourth period is Wuyi and Wanding; and the fifth period is Diyi and Dixin.

In the first phase of the oracle bone inscriptions, the chaste people have "bin", "争", "亘", "永", "enough", "Wei", etc., all for the period of wuding calligrapher, calligraphy style majestic and careful, knife law strong, word potential open; the second phase of the chaste people have "big", "travel", "travel", "travel", "travel", "travel", "travel", "travel", "travel", "travel" and "travel", "travel". travel", "line", "brother", "hi", "big", "Ho", "逐", "尹" and "出", etc., with a muddy calligraphic style; in the third period, Jeongnim has "Peng", "Di", "Kou", "Ning", "Feng ", "obvious", "teach", "travel", etc., the calligraphy style decadent, childish; the fourth period, the chaste people have "halo ", "take", "I", "history", "car", "in" and so on, the knife and brush strange craggy, the wind and spirit of spilling, the interest of sound enough to start the oracle bone writing a lineage; the fifth period, the chaste people have "yellow", "swim", "Li "and so on, the calligraphy style is neat and beautiful, the knife does not cover the pen, has opened the Jinwen precedent.

The oracle bone calligraphy five periods of style evolution of the division of induction although from modern scholars subjective deduction, but on its oracle bone art style transmutation, then this division is undoubtedly has the basis of the history of the book. Putting aside the fact of the existence of oracle bone style, what is more important is the exploration of the inner historical difficulties and deep cultural structure that governed the evolution of oracle bone style. As a non-conscious calligraphy writing, the establishment of its aesthetic style and the main body of the calligrapher to a large extent lack of intrinsic connection, and the composition of its style is covered by the whole of the witch history culture, which makes the oracle bone writing itself always suffused with a mysterious religious aura. Since the Yin and Shang periods, the whole society was overshadowed by the god-based thinking, the cultural background governing the stylistic evolution of oracle-bone inscriptions did not change much as a whole, but the restoration and revitalization of the political rites and rituals did influence the stylistic evolution of the oracle-bone inscriptions to a certain extent." Dong Zuobin divides the oracle bones into five phases while categorizing the whole oracle bones into the old and the new, thus revealing the influence of political rituals on the stylistic evolution of the oracle bones. He considers the periods of Pan Geng, Xiao Xin, Xiao B, Wu Ding, and Zu Geng to be the old school, and the periods of Zu Jia, GG Xin, and Kang Ding to be the new school, which implemented the new system; the periods of Wu Ding and Wen Ding restored the classical tradition, and the period of Di B Di Xin restored the new system. Most of the deeds of the old-school chaste men were written with grand and bold strokes, but the layouts were scattered and uneven. Most of the Shuji of the new school of Chingren are neat and meticulous, with even chapters and a tight structure, but they are out of order. "

In the stylistic composition of the oracle bone inscriptions, the existence and influence of the calligrapher's personality is also an issue that cannot be ignored. When we regard the oracle bone as a non-conscious writing calligraphy form, we do not intend to exclude the oracle bone in the category of art, but only from a more purely artistic position to the aesthetic non-subjective oracle bone calligraphy to be culturally defined. By the way, under this premise, we can't absolutely avoid and ignore the problem of the calligrapher's individuality in oracle bone calligraphy. The calligrapher's individuality is not equivalent to the calligrapher's subjective consciousness, and its endowment of physiological factors is much greater than the cultural and spiritual factors here. As a result, although in the Yin and Shang witch-history cultural background, the aesthetic style of the scribe is difficult to escape from the general provisions of the overall culture, but there is a possibility that the book style appendage of the interpretation of self-personality. Can see: the oracle bone writing style of five by the majestic and magnificent Mu neat and beautiful style of the field, in addition to the influence of political rituals, the most important factor is no more than the influence of the calligrapher's personality.

In the study of the history of calligraphy, conscious calligraphy and non-conscious calligraphy definition constitutes a problematic scenario. According to the general classification standard of history of calligraphy, oracle bone script is in the last ancient culture period, and thus belongs to the category of non-conscious calligraphy, its nature is "the application of instrumental text, does not have the independence of the art of calligraphy as a text and the pursuit of the calligraphy of the beauty of the self-consciousness, and also does not have the mature standard of calligraphy". The upper limit of the history of calligraphy in ancient China, from the strict narrow sense, when the end of the Han Dynasty Huan, Ling occasion, from the broad sense, can be traced back to the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, earlier than this period does not exist in calligraphy, or no calligraphy". From the standpoint of the history of calligraphy, the definition of conscious calligraphy and non-conscious calligraphy is mainly based on the subject's cultural consciousness, that is to say, the definition of conscious calligraphy and non-conscious calligraphy mainly depends on the interpretation and recognition of culture. As a matter of fact, from the standpoint of art form, no matter whether it is self-conscious or non-self-form calligraphy, they all *** have the same artistic aesthetic meaning and value." Works of art are essentially used to accomplish a wide variety of behaviors. "In ancient art, the aesthetic effect of art is often hidden in the pragmatic function it. As a product of the Yin and Shang witch-history culture, the oracle bone inscriptions, though mainly used as tools for witchcraft rituals, have not yet separated their aesthetic value from the state of nature and thus gained independence. However, the aesthetic and religious connotations of the oracle bones themselves coexist, and it is not an exaggeration to say that the reason why the oracle bones can become a tool for divination rituals in the Yin and Shang witchcraft culture is precisely by virtue of its intrinsic value of aesthetic contemplation.

From the fact that there existed jade and stone ZhuMoShu in the oracle bone writing and there were brush marks on the bone fragments, at the same time, the oracle bone writing and the complete conveyance of the meaning of the JinWen constitute a cross-synchronous development, the oracle bone writing belongs to the category of the culture of the brush. That is to say leaving the tortoise, the religious anthropological stipulation of oracle bone divination, and the special material medium, oracle bone writing can fully constitute a self-contained context centered on brush writing." The tortoise may have been what later developed into a totemic symbol of the powerful Shang clans in ancient times, which later influenced other clans (including the rulers of the successor Zhou dynasty) as a universal primitive religious superstition as a result of being politically dominant, and which long influenced traditional Chinese culture and aesthetic consciousness, which was the basis for one of the later-formed Confucian texts, the Zhou Yi. "The divine worship of the tortoise limited the range of material choices for writing on the oracle bones, but this did not cancel out and obliterate the sense of calligraphic rhythm of the oracle bones. The reason why we believe that the oracle bone script establishes the foundation of the art of Chinese calligraphy lies in the fact that the oracle bone script comprehensively embodies the spirit of the cultural essence as well as the practical technical rationality of Chinese calligraphy. Calligraphy's form - spatial modeling; brushwork - the space-time movement of the "line" constitutes the core context of calligraphy, and it can be said that the development of the art of calligraphy has always been centered around these two. Oracle in the spatial structure has tended to be complete, the sense of penmanship also around the concept of "writing" as a prerequisite for further awakening. In the fifth phase of the oracle bone "Zai Feng deer bone dagger engraving rhetoric" and a small number of Zhu Shu or ink on the oracle bone, can be clearly recognized in the handwriting conveyed in the flavor of ink and brushwork. The calligraphic lines have given way to a sense of the sharpness of the strokes of the brush, and the strokes are light and heavy, with the strokes varying in weight and speed. The curves of the brush are protected, and the fusion of the curves, the gentle flow of the brush is the first of its kind in the "Seal Character Guidelines". The tendency of cross-fertilization between the oracle bone inscriptions of the late Yin and Shang dynasties and the gold inscriptions of the same period began to appear and directly influenced the gold inscriptions of the early Zhou Dynasty. In fact, the late Shang dynasty oracle bone inscriptions and gold inscriptions were all written with a brush as the core content. And the oracle bone Zhu Shu ink book and constitute the Yin Shang brush writing goblet, in the past, some people suspect that from the oracle bone to the Zhou Jinwen lack of inheritance between the conversion of penmanship, in fact, the conversion of inheritance of the core that is the oracle bone Zhu Shu, ink book system.