What are the forms of China's early writing?

Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Oracle bone inscriptions mainly refers to Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Yin Ruins, which is Oracle Bone Inscriptions carved (or written) on tortoise shells and animal bones by the royal family in the late Shang Dynasty (14 ~ 1 century). This is the earliest ancient Chinese character found in China with a relatively complete system. Oracle Bone Inscriptions is an ancient script in China, which is regarded as an early form of modern Chinese characters and is sometimes used. It is also the oldest mature script in China. Oracle Bone Inscriptions is also known as Wen Qi, tortoise shell script or tortoise shell animal bone script. Oracle Bone Inscriptions is a very important material of ancient Chinese characters. Most of the Oracle Bone Inscriptions were found in the famous ruins of Yin Dynasty, located in Huayuanzhuang in the northwest of Anyang City and Xiaotun Village in Houjiazhuang, Henan Province. It was once the capital of the central dynasty in the late Yin and Shang Dynasties. So it's called Yin Ruins. These Oracle Bone Inscriptions are basically the divination records of Shang rulers. Shang rulers were very superstitious, such as whether there would be disasters, whether it would rain in ten days, whether there would be a good harvest of crops, whether the war could be won, what sacrifices should be made to ghosts and gods, and so on. In order to understand the will of ghosts and gods and the quality of things, the materials used for divination are mainly tortoise's abdominal armor, carapace and shoulder blade of cattle. Usually, some small holes are dug or drilled on the back of Oracle bones for divination, which Oracle Bone Inscriptions experts call "drilling". During divination, heating these pits will cause cracks on the surface of Oracle bones. This crack is called "trillion". The word "Bu" in Oracle Bone Inscriptions is like an omen. People engaged in divination judge good or bad according to the various shapes of divination. According to Oracle Bone Inscriptions in the Shang Dynasty, Chinese characters at that time had developed into a complete writing system that could be written in Chinese. In the discovered Oracle Bone Inscriptions of Yin Ruins, the number of words has reached about 4000. There are a lot of signifiers, pictographs, knowing characters and many pictographs. There are great differences in appearance, but they are basically the same in word formation. At present, there are about 6.5438+0.5 million pieces of Oracle bones with more than 4,500 words. The contents recorded by Oracle Bone Inscriptions are extremely rich, involving many aspects of social life in Shang Dynasty, including not only politics, military affairs, culture and social customs. But also involves astronomy, calendar, medicine and other science and technology. Judging from the recognized character 1500 in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, the methods of "pictographic characters, knowing characters, pictophonetic characters, indicating things, transferring notes and borrowing words" have been developed. It shows the unique charm of Chinese characters in China. China Shang Dynasty and early Western Zhou Dynasty (about 16 BC ~ 10 BC) were the earliest known documents of China. The words carved on tortoise shells were once called Wen Qi, Oracle Bone Inscriptions, tortoise shell, Yin Ruins, etc. , now commonly known as Oracle Bone Inscriptions. Everything should be divined with tortoise shells (common in tortoise shells) or animal bones (common in cattle scapula), and then the related matters of divination (such as divination time, fortune teller, questions, divination results, verification, etc. ) should be engraved on the Oracle bones and kept as archives by the royal historian (see the archives in Oracle Bone Inscriptions). There are still a few notes and inscriptions in Oracle Bone Inscriptions's dedication. Oracle Bone Inscriptions's dedication covers astronomy, calendar, meteorology, geography, country, lineage, family, figures, officials, conquest, prison, agriculture, animal husbandry, hunting, transportation, religion, sacrifice, disease, birth and disaster. It is extremely precious to study the social history, culture and language of ancient China, especially the Shang Dynasty. Also known as Zhong Dingwen. Shang and Zhou Dynasties were the Bronze Age, in which ding was the representative of the ritual vessels and bell was the representative of the musical instruments. "Zhong Ding" is synonymous with bronze ware. Therefore, inscriptions on Zhong Dingwen or bronzes mean inscriptions cast or carved on bronzes. The so-called bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. China entered the Bronze Age in the Xia Dynasty, and the smelting of copper and the manufacture of bronzes were very developed. Because copper was called gold a week ago, it was on the bronze ware. Because the number of characters on this kind of bronzes is the largest in Zhong Ding, it used to be called "Zhong Dingwen". From the early Shang Dynasty to the Qin Dynasty, the number of characters on bronzes was about 1 200 years. According to Rong Geng's Jin Wen Bian, the number of characters on bronzes is 3,722, including 2,420 recognizable characters. The number of words varies, and the contents of the records vary widely. Its main content is mostly to celebrate the achievements of ancestors and princes, while recording major historical events. For example, the famous Mao has 497 words, covering a wide range, reflecting the social life at that time. Shi Guwen, the representative figure of Da Zhuan, was named after Da Zhuan written by Tai Shihuan of Zhou Xuanwang. He transformed the original text and got its name because it was engraved on the stone drum. He is the originator of stone carving. He began in the late Western Zhou Dynasty and traveled in Qin during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. The fonts are similar to those in Qin Zhuan, but the shapes of the fonts are mostly overlapped. Xiao Zhuan is also called "Qin Zhuan". During the Qin Dynasty, Li Si was ordered to unify the characters, namely Xiao Zhuan. It was popular in the Qin Dynasty. Its shape is long and neat, and it evolved from Da Zhuan. According to Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi Xu in the Eastern Han Dynasty, Zhao Gao was ordered by Zhongche Mansion to write Love Calendar, while Hu Wu was ordered by the Taishi to write Bo Xue: "All of them are based on the big seal of the uncle, or they are quite preserved, so-called small seal." The residual stones of "Langyatai Stone Carving" and "Taishan Stone Carving" are the representative works of Xiao Zhuan. Small seal carved by Qin Quan. On the basis of the seal script originally used by Qin State, a unified writing form of Chinese characters was created by simplifying and canceling the variant characters of other six countries. It was popular in China until the end of the Western Han Dynasty, and was gradually replaced by official script. However, because of its beautiful font, it has always been favored by calligraphers, and because of its complex strokes, strange forms and arbitrary twists and turns, seal cutting, especially the official seal that needs anti-counterfeiting, has always been adopted. Modern new anti-counterfeiting technology appears. All the words in Kangxi Dictionary are also marked with the writing method of Xiao Zhuan. Official script is basically evolved from seal script, mainly changing the round strokes of seal script into square folds, which makes writing faster, and it is difficult to draw round strokes on wooden slips with pigments. Official script is also called "official character" and "ancient book". It is a font based on seal script to meet the needs of convenient writing. It also changed the flat and round lines of Xiao Zhuan into straight strokes to facilitate writing. It can be divided into "ancient plum" and "modern plum". The appearance of official script is a great change of ancient writing and calligraphy in China. Official script is a common solemn font in Chinese characters, with a slightly wider and flatter writing effect, long horizontal painting and short vertical painting, which is exquisite. Calligraphy is known as "Han Li Tang Kai". It is also said that official script originated in the Warring States period. Compared with seal script, official script originated in the Eastern Han Dynasty. The appearance of official script is another great change of China script, which has brought China's calligraphy art into a new realm, a turning point in the development history of China script, and laid the foundation for regular script. By the Eastern Han Dynasty, official script was flat, neat and exquisite. Full of the severity of change, calligraphy has artistic beauty, diverse styles and great artistic appreciation value. It is said that the official script was compiled by Cheng Miao, who was in prison at the end of Qin Dynasty. By eliminating complexity and simplifying, the font becomes round and square, and the strokes become straight. "Lian Bi" has been changed to "broken pen", which makes it easier to write. This "official" is not a prisoner, but a "small official". It became the main script. As a newly-established official script of Qin Dynasty, it left many meanings of seal script, and then it continued to develop and process. It broke the writing tradition since the Zhou and Qin Dynasties and gradually laid the foundation for regular script. Under the unification of the thought of "ousting a hundred schools of thought and respecting Confucianism alone", it was the official script of the Han Dynasty that gradually developed into the dominant script, and at the same time, cursive script, regular script and running script were derived. The straight pen can be used as a model, hence the name. Began in the Eastern Han Dynasty. There are many famous calligraphers, such as Ou Ti (Tang-Ou Yangxun), Yu Ti (Tang-Yu Shinan), Yan Ti (Tang-Yan Zhenqing), Liu Ti (Tang-Liu Gongquan) and Zhao Ti (Song-Yuan-Zhao Mengfu). For example, Zhong You's Epiphany Table (left), Ji Zhibiao, Wang Xizhi's Theory of Music and Yi, Huang Tingjing, etc. , can be a representative work. Look at its characteristics, as Weng Fanggang said, "change the wave painting of official script, pick a little, and still keep the vertical of official script." After the Eastern Jin Dynasty, in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, because of regional differences, personal habits and book styles were very different. The book in the north is strong, and the book in the south is rich, each with its own brilliance. However, Bao and Kang Youwei highly praised the books of the two dynasties, especially the inscriptions of the Northern Wei Dynasty. Kang gave ten beautiful women to emphasize the advantages of Weibei. The regular script of the Tang Dynasty is also like the national situation of the Tang Dynasty. Yu Shinan, Ou Yangxun, Chu Suiliang, Yan Zhenqing in the middle Tang Dynasty and Liu Gongquan in the late Tang Dynasty all paid attention to their regular script works and were regarded as models of calligraphy. A font between regular script and cursive script can be said to be cursive script or cursive script. It came into being to make up for the slow writing speed of regular script and the illegible cursive script. The strokes are not as scribbled as cursive. Regular script should not be as correct as regular script. More regular script than cursive script is called running script, and more cursive script than cursive script is called running script. Running script came into being in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. Cursive script: a style of Chinese characters, which was formed in the Han Dynasty and evolved from official script for simple writing. It can be divided into three types: Cao Zhang, Modern Grass and Crazy Grass. Cao Zhang's strokes have rules to follow, and his masterpiece is Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Wang Xizhi's "The First Month" and "The Show" in the Jin Dynasty appeared in the Tang Dynasty, represented by Zhang Xu and Huai Su, and became artistic creations completely divorced from practicality. Since then, cursive script has only been copied by calligraphers from Cao Zhang, Cao Jin and Kuangcao. For the convenience of writing, Zhang Xu's Abdominal Pain and Huai Su's Autobiographical Post were produced. Later, it gradually developed and formed a kind of "Cao Zhang" with artistic value. At the end of the Han Dynasty, Zhang Zhi changed "Cao Zhang" to "Modern Grass", which was written in one stroke. In the Tang Dynasty, Zhang Xu and Huai Su developed into "wild grass" with constant brushwork and varied fonts.