What are the ancient Chinese scripts?

From the point of view of the law of development of writing and calligraphy, those belonging to the natural formation during the evolution of writing (excluding calligraphers' calligraphic styles due to their personal styles) are the following fonts:

Oracle Bone Script

Golden Script

Big Seal Script

Small Seal Script

Simplified Script

Clerical Script

Chapters and Cursive Script

Running Script

Jin Cao

Wei Bei

Regular Script

Mad Cursive

Running Cursive

The above fonts are roughly listed in chronological order of appearance, but the history of calligraphy is summarized into five fonts, called the Five Styles of Scripts, which are:

Seal Script - -including oracle bone script, gold script, big seal script, and small seal script

Li -including simple silk script

Zhen (Kai) -including Wei Bei

Running

Cursive -including Zhangcao, Jincao, Xingcao, and Bao Cao

After the Song Dynasty, the invention of movable-type printing led to the creation of Song Style, a specialized typeface used for printing

Many fine art fonts, like those that exist today, were gradually invented by recent moderns.

1. Oracle bone writing

Mainly refers to the Yinxu Oracle bone writing, also known as the "Yinxu script", "Wang Batan", "Yinqi", is the Yinshang era carved on tortoise shell and animal bones. It is the writing engraved on tortoise shell and animal bones during the Yin-Shang period (14th to 11th centuries BC), which was used by the royal family of China in the late Shang Dynasty (14th to 11th centuries BC) for divination and record-keeping. About 27% of the oracle bone inscriptions are morphosyntactic characters, which shows that the oracle bone inscriptions were already a fairly mature writing system. Because the oracle bone is carved with a knife, and the knife has a sharp and blunt, bone has a fine and thick, hard and soft, so the carving of the strokes vary in thickness, and even some of the slender as hair, the connection of the strokes and peeling, thick and heavy. Structure, length and size are not certain, or sparse, intricate; or dense layers of very neat and solemn, so it can show a simple and colorful infinite interest.

Oracle bone script, although the size of the knot, intricate changes, but has a symmetrical, stable pattern. Therefore, some people believe that Chinese calligraphy, strictly speaking, is the beginning of the oracle bone inscriptions, because the oracle bone inscriptions have been prepared for the three elements of calligraphy, that is, the pen, the word, chapter.

2. Jinwen

is the inscription cast on the Yin and Zhou bronzes, also known as Zhongdingwen. The Shang and Zhou Dynasties were the era of bronze, and the bronze ritual vessels were represented by tripods, and the musical instruments were represented by bells, and "Zhong Ding" was synonymous with bronzes.

With the oracle-bone script, the strokes are thin, the straight strokes are many, and the twists and turns are mostly square, but the gold script is fat and thick, the curved strokes are many, and the lumps are many After Qin unified the six kingdoms, it began to standardize the script, which is known as the "Book of the same language". The standardization of characters was based on the Qin script, and the evolution of Chinese characters after Qin was also based on the Qin small seal script, which was standardized by Qin, and the ancient scribe, which was a form of daily writing for the Qin seal script. After the Qin's "book with the same text", the scripts of the six countries were eliminated, and the Qin script became the real mainstream. Therefore, the Qin script is an important link between the ancient script of the Western Zhou Dynasty and the official script of the Han and Wei Dynasties, and even the Regular Script. Its changes can be seen as part of the evolution of Chinese characters according to their own internal structural laws. For this reason, as far as philology is concerned, the study of the Western Script of the Qin lineage is more important than that of the Six Kingdoms Script, because it is a direct descendant of the Chinese characters, whereas the Six Kingdoms Script is a collateral branch, although they also influenced and absorbed each other.

3. The Big Seal Character

By the late Western Zhou Dynasty, the Chinese characters developed and evolved into the Big Seal Character. As a result of the development of the Big Seal Script, two features emerged: firstly, linearization, the early unevenly thick and thin lines became even and soft, and the lines they drew along with the objects were very concise and vivid; secondly, standardization, the structure of the characters tended to be neat and tidy, and gradually left the original shape of the drawings, laying down the foundation of the square characters. The lines were even more uniform than those of the Jinwen script, and the linearization reached a completed level, with no obvious unevenness in thickness and thinness. The structure of forms was more neat than that of Jinwen, and it began to get rid of the constraints of hieroglyphs, laying the foundation of square characters. There are almost no different characters on the same artifact. The font is complicated, and the radicals often overlap, making it inconvenient to write. The oldest known topography of the Shikuwen is the Song topography in the Fan's Tianyi Pavilion in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province.

The font of the Shiku script is roughly between the Zhou Golden Script and the Qin Small Seal Script. It is known that it was written before Qin Shi Huang, and should belong to the seal script system. Compared with the Small Seal Script, it can be called the Big Seal Script, and it is the representative work of the Big Seal Script. Its font is similar to the Small Seal, but more complicated, and resembles the Zongzhou Yi ware, but more neat and tidy, so it can be regarded as solemn and strict. Kang Youwei, in his "Shuangji" (Two Oars in a Broad Art Boat), described the Shiku script as: "The gold is fine, the grass and the chi are in a mass of clouds, and it has its own peculiarities without bothering to be neatly cut. The body is slightly square flat, unified view of the worm seal script, gas similar, the stone drum for China's first antiquity, but also when the first law of the calligrapher also". Can be said to appreciate. Stone drum text to the art of the treasure, but after the Northern Song Dynasty, the Thessalonians, less people Pro, until after the middle of the Qing Dynasty, archaeology and respect for monumental winds resumed incandescent, the stone drum word, especially for the calligraphers to pay attention to. Wu Da was able to get its classical and strict rhyme. Wu Changshuo, on the other hand, was able to develop the spirit of its ancient and majestic style. The calligraphy of both of them was valued by the future generations.

4. Small Seal Script

Also called "Qin Seal Script". During the Qin Dynasty, Li Si was ordered to standardize the script, which became known as the Small Seal Script. It was popularized during the Qin Dynasty. The shape is long, round and neat, derived from the Big Seal Script. Though not early, the number of Small Seal Scripts is very large, and it has a special position in the history of Chinese writing, which is a bridge from ancient writing to modern writing.

Small Seal Script Style

The style of the Small Seal Script during the Qin Dynasty can be seen in the surviving relics such as the Taishan Carved Stones, the Luangya Terrace Carved Stones, and the Quanliang Inscriptions. The small seal script has thin strokes, which is why it is also known as the "Jade Chopsticks Seal Script"; it is rectangular in shape, and its structure is often symmetrical between left and right, which gives people a feeling of uprightness and beauty

In the ink and writing that stirred up the reckless thoughts of the Warring States sages and dispersed the bones of the Wei and Jin Confucian scholars, the Simplified Script is undoubtedly a representative of the ancient and simple style of the script.

5. Simple book

What is simple book? Simply put, the simple script is the text written on the "simple". From the Warring States period to the Wei and Jin dynasties, there was a kind of calligraphy that was written on bamboo and wooden writing materials that were narrow and long in shape. Bamboo called Jane; wooden called documents, or zha, both collectively referred to as "Jane". Simplified script is generally written in Chinese clerical script or a variation of Chinese clerical script; and because it was prevalent in the Qin-Han and Wei-Jin periods, it is also known as Han-Jian. In Li Shangyin's "Chip Pen Post", there is a sentence that reads, "The apes and birds are still afraid of the Simplified Script, and the winds and clouds have long been protecting it". It can be seen that the book of simple ancient, sacred, is an ancient form of writing not easily used and very careful.

The former said that the book of Jane is the draft, the instrument of caution; and said that the book of Jane is the country has an emergency, used to ask for help of the instrument. In fact, these two former interpretations are not accurate, they say is the use of the book of Jane, and the difference in the content of the writing, and the form of writing has nothing to do. In fact, the so-called simple book, is a form of calligraphy art, just more ancient.

The famous contemporary calligrapher, Mr. Zhang Youqing, is famous for his simple calligraphy. His simple script, like his character, personality, both the excellent traditional culture of the deep, solid, but also modern culture of the open, fast; both the Qin bells and Han tripods of the heavy, majestic, but also the poetry of the Chu Rhetoric of the floating, dynamic. Appreciate his simple book, really can read "shrinking will be 100 feet pale scales, stone broken waves fly paper up" (Guo Feng Hui "inscription Qin Zhongwen painting pine") of the timeless flavor.

6. Clerical Script

Basically, it is an evolution of the Seal Script, which changed the rounded strokes of the Seal Script to square folds, which made writing faster, and made it difficult to draw rounded strokes on wooden slips with lacquer writing. Regarding the definition of the official script, Mr. Wu Botao, a recent writer, said in an article entitled "Early Qin and Han Official Scripts from Unearthed Qin Simplified Palindromes", "The original meaning of the word can be used as an explanation. In "Shuowen Jiezi", the meaning of '隶' is 'attached', and in "Houhanshu - Feng Yi Zhuan", it is '属', which is still in use today, and there is '隶属' in modern Chinese. This meaning is still in use today, and there is the word 'subordinate' in modern Chinese. 〈晋书-卫恒传〉, 〈说文解字序〉, and the Duan notes, also consider the official script to be 'supporting what the seal script is unable to do', so the official script is an auxiliary font for the small seal script."

Secondly, what exactly is called the official script, and what is the strict difference between the official script and the seal script, Mr. Wu Botao has analyzed and defined in the above article, and here are some excerpts from Wu's article which are worth considering. Wu Yun:

"The Small Seal Script still preserves the legacy of the pictographs, drawing them into objects and flexing them with the body; the Official Script goes one step further, destroying the pictographs with the symbols of the brush strokes and making them into pictographs that do not resemble the shape of the characters" (he has given some examples of the character shapes, which you can refer to the original text). The evolution of the official script - the official change

The evolution of the official script is called the "official change", and the official change is the beginning and the end, and plays an important role in the formation of the cursive and regular scripts.

Nomenclature of the Official Script

Ancient Clerical Script

Present Clerical Script

Qin Clerical Script

Han Clerical Script

7. Zhang Cao

It is an early form of cursive script, which began in the Han Dynasty and evolved from cursive clerical script. Zhang Cao is the predecessor of "present cursive", and "present cursive" difference is mainly to retain the form of the official brushwork, the upper and lower characters are independent of the writing

Running Script is a type of script between the regular script and cursive script, which can be said to be the grass of the regular script or cursive script of the regular script. It was created to compensate for the slow writing speed of Regular Script and the difficulty of recognizing Cursive Script. The strokes are not as scribbly as in cursive, nor do they require the regular script to be as upright as it is written in a more indulgent and fluid manner, close to the cursive script known as Xingcao; the writing is more upright and smooth, close to the regular script known as Xingkai.

In the process of writing, the brush makes the turn, in the various forms of dots and strokes are more obvious, the movement of the brush tends to be between the dots and strokes, between the word and the word left behind by each other, as fine as the traces of the silk, which is the drawstring.

8. Running Script

It is the fast writing of Regular Script, the flow of Regular Script. After analyzing several groups of characters in Regular and Running Scripts, it was found that when Regular and Running Scripts are written, the writing style of the dots and strokes, the guidelines to be followed by the pen, such as the center stroke, spreading the hair, inverse into the flat out, lifting and pressing the starting main, hidden edge and so on are the same, only the Running Scripts are more stretching and flowing.

The use of strokes in running script is characterized by the following:

[1] the majority of dots and strokes are written with an open stroke;

[2] the second stroke is replaced by the second one;

[3] the use of simple strokes is replaced by complicated strokes;

[4] the use of hooks, picks, and draws is used to strengthen the echoing of the dots and strokes;

[5] the use of roundedness is replaced by squaredness;

[6] the use of the second stroke is replaced by the first stroke;

[7] the use of the second stroke is replaced by the second stroke.

9. Imago Cursive

Also known as "Xiao Cao". A kind of cursive writing. Started at the end of the Han Dynasty. It is the innovation of Zhang Cao. The strokes are continuous and winding, and there are links between the words, so the writing is simple and convenient. It was developed and perfected by Wang Xizhi of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. Ancient chapter of grass, failed to macro-yi, different from the real body, together with the poor pseudo-liberties of the reasoning, the extreme grass trace of the cause, not as ligustrum line, in the past the law is different, adults should change the body." More indulgent "wild grass" for the "grass" development.

10. Wei monument

North Dynasty monuments collectively, which is characterized by the power of the pen, strong font, is a model of calligraphy Wei calligraphy art, mainly divided into two categories: one is the Buddhist inscription of the statue; one is a folk epitaph calligraphy with Han Li penmanship, stylistic square and strict, calm strokes, varied, beautiful.

Wei monument refers to the North and South Dynasties period of the Northern Dynasties of the monumental calligraphy. Existing Wei monument calligraphy style are regular script, so sometimes these regular script inscriptions are also called "Wei Kai". Originally also known as the Northern Tablet, in the successive dynasties of the Northern Dynasties, the Northern Wei Dynasty had the longest period of existence, and later used the term "Wei Tablet" to refer to the calligraphic works of the Northern Dynasties, including the Eastern Wei Dynasty, the Western Wei Dynasty, the Northern Qi Dynasty, and the Northern Zhou Dynasty. These inscriptions are mainly in the form of "stone tablets", "epitaphs", "cliffs" and "statues". The main purpose of the project is to promote the development of the city's cultural and historical heritage.

11. Regular Script

Also known as regular script, or real script. It is characterized by its square shape and straight strokes, which can be used as a model, hence its name. It began in the Eastern Han Dynasty. There are many famous writers of Regular Script, such as "Ou Style" (Ouyang Xun), "Yu Style" (Yu Shinan), "Yan Style" (Yan Zhenqing), "Liu Style " (Liu Gongquan), "Zhao Style" (Zhao Mengfu), and so on.

12. Berserk Cursive

It is based on the present cursive will be dotted and drawn continuous writing, forming a "one stroke book", in the chapter style and the present cursive lineage.

Berserk Cursive, Expressionism in Calligraphy

The achievement of Berserk Cursive is another manifestation of the peak of calligraphy in the Tang Dynasty. The representative characters are Zhang Xu and Huai Su. In the ancient Chinese calligraphy, no matter it is the exposition of seal, official, line, regular script or cursive script, most of them are compared with the natural landscape or some phenomena, described and described, and the readers have to rely on a kind of life feeling and life experience to realize, in order to appreciate and understand. Calligraphy is really a very esoteric art, especially cursive, the writer is often full of passion, in a state of exhilaration completed, the reader from the ink vaguely feel a certain emotion.

13. Running cursive

Between the regular script, cursive script between a font, can be said to be the regular script of grass or cursive script of regular. It was created to compensate for the slow writing speed of regular script and the difficulty of recognizing cursive script. The strokes are not as scribbly as in cursive, nor do they require the regular script to be as upright. The Regular Script is more than the Cursive Script is called "Xing Kai". Those with more cursive than regular strokes are called "Running Cursive". Running script was created around the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty.