Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Traditional stories - Ancient stories about Chinese characters

Ancient stories about Chinese characters

Ancient stories about Chinese characters include Cangjie's creation of characters, Chinese characters and Oracle Bone Inscriptions, Chinese characters and calligraphy, and so on.

1, Cangjie creates characters

According to legend, Cang Xie is a historian of the Yellow Emperor, who created characters according to the changes of the universe. The story of Cang Xie's creation of Chinese characters was widely circulated in ancient China, and was regarded as an important legend of the origin of Chinese characters.

2. Chinese characters and Oracle Bone Inscriptions

During the Shang Dynasty, people used Oracle Bone Inscriptions to record the contents of divination, forming the Oracle Bone Inscriptions. Oracle Bone Inscriptions is one of the oldest extant characters in China, and its physical structure has unique artistic value. Oracle Bone Inscriptions reflects people's social life, religious beliefs and ideas at that time, and is an important material for studying China's ancient history and culture.

3. Chinese characters and calligraphy

Calligraphy is one of the traditional arts in China, and its origin can be traced back to the origin of Chinese characters. The early Chinese characters had different shapes and complicated structures, which made writing difficult. In order to facilitate writing and memory, people gradually simplified the form of Chinese characters and formed regular script with clear strokes. With the passage of time, calligraphy has gradually developed into an independent art, producing many famous calligraphers and works.

Historical introduction of Chinese characters;

1, before Shang Dynasty

Since ancient times, China has said that "calligraphy and painting are of the same origin", because the earliest source of words is pictures, and calligraphy and painting are brothers, born from the same root, and have many internal relations. The origin of Chinese characters is the original painting, and primitive people express themselves in the form of "painting" in their lives. Slowly changed from the original picture to "ideographic symbol"

2. Jia Hu prints

More than 8,000 years ago, a batch of prints (9,000-7,800 years ago) were unearthed at Jiahu Site in Wuyang, Henan Province, which were called Jia Hu prints. Some scholars think it's just lettering, while others think it's writing. Tsung i Jao, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, made an in-depth study of Jia Hu's inscriptions, and put forward that "Jia Hu's inscriptions provide brand-new information for the key issue of the origin of Chinese characters". Ge, an archaeologist in the history department of Peking University, also thinks that "these symbols should be a kind of writing".