Why is the character for "longevity" a treasure of traditional Chinese culture?

The art of Chinese longevity characters has a long history. The Chinese characters were actually created according to the "Six Books", and the character for longevity is no exception.

The first Shou characters appeared in the treasure trove of Chinese characters in the form of hieroglyphs. The so-called hieroglyphic characters were written from physical objects, but the character for longevity had no concrete form.

It is said that the hieroglyphic character for longevity evolved from ancient legends. During the period of Fuxi Clan, the Dragon Book was created based on the Dragon and Horse Negative Book out of the River Luo and performing the Eight Trigrams, and the Spike Book was created by Shennong Clan in the Neolithic period. In ancient myths and legends, there are records of Shennong seeing eight spikes of Jiahe and making the Spike Book.

Cangjie created the Bird Trace Book during the Yellow Emperor's period, the Turtle Book during the Yao Emperor's period, and the Tadpole Script during the Gao Yang Clan's period, all of which were taken from physical forms and used to express the meaning of the character for longevity, which is supposed to be the prototype of the character for longevity.

According to evidence, the application of the character for longevity began in the Shang Dynasty. At that time, there was no standardized hieroglyphics, people from the oracle bone inscriptions, borrowed a "畴" character as the word for life, because the domain is the meaning of the field.

At that time, crops were planted according to the shape of the situation, the field is very long and curved, and it has the meaning of longevity, so it was agreed to take the domain as the symbol of the character for longevity, and the character for longevity was unified.

Later, people thought that the ridge was in the ground, and people added a Tian character to it, taking the meaning and the sound at the same time, so it also carries the meaning of the shape and sound character. Therefore, the oracle bone character for longevity was borrowed from "畴", on the basis of which a great variety of forms emerged.

Borrowing the word "畴" is, after all, a word with two meanings, and it is not easy to differentiate between them. The ancient writing of the old character, from the shape, like an old man holding a walking stick, from the meaning of the word the old man means longevity, so they took the head of the old character, and then covered in the word shou, combining the two together, the upper side of the form of the meaning of the old, the lower side of the form of the sound 畴, composed of a form of the word shou. From this, we can see that the original meaning of the character shou (寿) was long in age.

The character shou (形声寿) was widely used in the Zhou Dynasty. In the Book of Songs? Lu Song", there is "three life as a friend, such as Gang Ruling", this sentence in the interpretation of the three life, no less than 10 ways to say, but think that refers to the majority of the three elders.

It can be seen that the use of the word "longevity" is a positive sign of good fortune and good luck, the pursuit of life expectancy and longevity, health, has become a social custom of the Chinese people from generation to generation. The old is life, life is honored, honored is noble, noble is blessed.

The Eastern Zhou Dynasty was a period of vassalage, and the writing of words was diverse, and it was a time of great creativity in the development of word derivation. It is not surprising that a character with several shapes appeared later on, resulting in the appearance of a thousand variations of the shape of the word "Shou", which caused great inconvenience in the use of the character.

Later, when Emperor Qin Shi Huang annexed the six states, Prime Minister Li Si and others took the seal script from the pre-Han period to organize and transform it, and created the Qin seal script to unify the whole world, which also unified the writing style of the character for longevity.

The Big Seal Script was a common script used during the Western Zhou Dynasty, and is believed to have been created by Bo Yi of the Xia Dynasty. For different writing mediums, the Big Seal script is also divided into Jinwen (金文) and Zhouwen (籀文).

Golden script refers to the inscriptions cast on Yin and Zhou bronzes, also known as Zhongdingwen. In the Xia Dynasty, China has entered the Bronze Age, the smelting of copper and copper manufacturing technology is very developed. Because before the Zhou Dynasty, copper was also called "gold", so the inscriptions on the bronzes were called "Jinwen" or "Jijinwen". And because of this kind of bronze to the most number of characters on the bell tripod, so in the past also called "bell tripod text". Jinwen was used from the early Shang Dynasty down to the end of the Qin Dynasty when the six kingdoms were destroyed over 1,200 years ago.

Previously, it was the name of an ancient form of Chinese writing. It is also known as "seal script" and "big seal script". It started in the late Western Zhou Dynasty and was popularized in Qin during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. The script is similar to the Qin Seal Script, but the shape of the characters overlaps. During the Han Dynasty and the Han Dynasty, although there were various styles of calligraphy, including official, seal script, cursive, and running script, the shape of the strokes was based on the pre-Qin script, and there was not much change.

Shou characters basically evolved in accordance with the order of the "Six Books" character creation standards, with most of the characters in the form of phonograms, but there are also a few indications and will be.

While Shou is not the earliest of the Chinese characters, it is the most varied and heteromorphic single character in China, surpassing any other Chinese character, which is unattainable by any other character in the world.

It can be said that the Shou character is the treasure of our traditional culture and art, and it is the unique cultural heritage of the Chinese nation.