Ancient Chinese characters

In ancient times, there were cuneiform, Oracle Bone Inscriptions, inscriptions on bronze, official script and regular script.

1, cuneiform

The oldest writing in the world is cuneiform. Cuneiform characters were created by Sumerians living in Mesopotamia and formed around 4000 BC. This kind of writing was originally carved on stone or wood, and the strokes were wedge-shaped, so it was called cuneiform writing.

This kind of writing is formed on the basis of picture writing, and it has evolved about 1000 years from expressing an idea with the help of graphics to forming real writing. Sumerians used semi-dry clay tablets made of clay as writing materials, wooden sticks and animal bones as pens, and dried them after writing, which became the medium for recording words. Cuneiform documents unearthed in modern times are all copied on clay tablets.

2. Oracle Bone Inscriptions

Oracle Bone Inscriptions is a relic of ancient divination. In Shang dynasty, when ancestors encountered difficulties, they often asked God for advice, burned tortoise shells or animal bones and observed their cracks, so as to determine good or bad luck. Zhen people carved the records of divination process on tortoise shells or animal bones, and its content angle was called Oracle Bone Inscriptions, and its text was called Oracle Bone Inscriptions.

Although Oracle Bone Inscriptions is not the earliest Chinese character, there is no doubt that it should be the earliest existing systematic character, which has the elements of the traditional so-called "Six Books", formed a complete system, and has been relatively perfect in brushwork, structure and composition.

3. Jinwen

In China archaeology, bronzes mainly refer to objects cast by copper-tin alloys in Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties. There were inscriptions on many bronzes at that time. At first, people called it Zhong Dingwen. Later, they felt that the name could not sum up the inscriptions on other objects except Zhong Dingwen, so they changed the name to bronze inscriptions, indicating the words engraved on all metals.

Therefore, inscriptions on bronze can be described as the inheritance and development of Oracle Bone Inscriptions. It originated in the Shang Dynasty and flourished in the Western Zhou Dynasty. Its main contents include sacrificial ceremonies, issuing tin orders, admonishing ministers and praising ancestors. Involved in the political, economic, military, religious and other fields of the society at that time, it provided extremely precious historical materials for future generations and attracted great attention from historians.

At the same time, the specific stippling and structural forms of inscriptions on bronze inscriptions, together with their material carriers, often produce a shocking historical charm and volume, which not only fills the blank in the history of calligraphy in Shang and Zhou dynasties, but also becomes the focus of calligraphy theory researchers, providing an object for copying and learning for the development of calligraphy art?

4. Official script

Official script originated on weekends. 1980, two wooden slips were unearthed from Qin Tomb in Haojiaping, Qingchuan County, Sichuan Province, with ink calligraphy on them, and the font was quite different from that of Dazhuan. Its distinctive features are simple style and rounded strokes. Moreover, the glyph is not a rectangle like seal script, but a flat square. The thickness of the pen is not as uniform as that of the seal script, but the weight is abrupt, with a slight "swallow-tailed silkworm head" trend.

There are different opinions about the origin of the name of official script. Han Shu's literature and art: "It's time to be an official script, starting with the troubles in the official prison, and then saving Yi and applying it to the official." In other words, it is called "official script" because it is applied to official script. On the other hand, he also said that Cheng Miao was an official jailer, offended Yunyang, increased or decreased the big seal, and removed its complexity, which was the suggestion. Therefore, it is called official script.

As for Cheng Miao's theory of creating servants, it has been quite popular since ancient times. However, the formation of official script is a gradual process. As mentioned earlier, during the Warring States period, some characters had the style of official script. It is the general trend of writing to simplify the official script. It should be said that it was the vast number of Chinese characters users who created the official script, and Cheng Miao may have sorted out and standardized it, rather than creating the official script alone.

The existing official script in Qin dynasty is represented by sleeping tiger bamboo slips. The vertical direction of its seal script is horizontal, and the font is not rectangular, but tends to be square or oblate; It got rid of the feature that the seal script pen rotates evenly, and became a horizontal and vertical gesture. This font, which is the transition from seal script to official script, is called "official script" by calligraphers.

In the Han Dynasty, official script replaced seal script and became the standard writing. The flat font and the foot grip of the wave pen have become the remarkable characteristics of the official script. Since the official script, the form has changed from lines to strokes, which indicates that Chinese characters have entered the stage of "modern writing" from "ancient writing".

5、

Official script is a great progress of seal script, a great leap in the development history of Chinese characters, and a pioneering writing at this writing stage. Its writing is much simpler than the winding seal script, but its shape requires a "swallowtail silkworm head" and twists and turns, and it is still not fast to write.

In Xu Shen's Shuo Xu Wen, "Han Xing has cursive script", which is a font simplified from official script. Because of its haste, it is called "cursive script". Although cursive writing is fast, it is scrawled, illegible, without uniform standards and rules. In order to correct its deviation, regular script came into being. The so-called "regular script" is the text that can be used as a model.

Regular script sprouted at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty. The Book of Jin Wei Heng Biography: "The method of regular script was pioneered by Wang Ci in Shanggu." Unfortunately, its words are now invisible, and its "model method" cannot be verified.

Clear marks. In the Sui and Tang Dynasties, regular script completely broke away from official script and developed into a new style. Regular script has a square shape and straight strokes, which saves the ripple of official script strokes and makes writing faster and more convenient. This horizontal and vertical square structure has been maintained to this day and has become a typical feature of orthographic Chinese characters.