From top to bottom, from right to left, why have Chinese characters been read like this for thousands of years?

The picture on the left shows Liangzhu black pottery ear-piercing pot; The picture on the right shows pottery carved by Long Qiu.

The starting line of Chinese characters should be free, and the word order and line order are not clearly defined. At present, a large number of suspicious characters have been unearthed, such as the black pottery ear-piercing pot unearthed from the ancient well of Liangzhu, Hucheng Lake, Wuxian County, Jiangsu Province, where the ampulla are arranged horizontally; The carved pottery pieces found in Gaoyou, Jiangsu Province can be divided into two groups, and the four-character group should be vertical.

However, when this kind of free deposit is faced with records with increased word count or higher functional requirements, the shortage is very obvious, and new deposit types will inevitably appear.

Why is the word order from top to bottom?

What really plays a key role in the new payment should be the new demand. According to the application of early Chinese characters, we can easily guess that it is Oracle Bone Inscriptions's divination, bamboo slips recording and other activities. Therefore, there are two main aspects that play a major role in the style of lines: one is Oracle Bone Inscriptions and bamboo slips themselves, and the other is the influence of the nature of activities.

The first aspect of Oracle bones is often omitted, because Oracle bones themselves have no great constraints on word order and line order; However, bamboo slips are often concerned, and scholars often identify the decisive role played by bamboo slips from the aspects of maintaining simple habits and writing habits. However, the top-down word order, especially the simple writing, is a bit far-fetched whether it is "convenient" or "keeping simple habits".

"Convenient theory" holds that Chinese characters are easy to write vertically, and the bamboo slips used are suitable for writing vertically, which is the decisive condition for writing Chinese characters. But in fact, the early Chinese characters didn't really pay attention to the writing order, so it doesn't matter whether they are written vertically or horizontally. At this time, writing is for glyphs, not glyphs. As far as bamboo slips are concerned, there is no clear objectivity suitable for horizontal or vertical writing, which is also the decisive factor for vertical writing order.

"The habit of keeping Jane" holds that the ancients should sit on the floor, hold Jane in their left hand, put it on their chest, and write with their right hand. It is the habit of keeping simple that determines the downward trend of word order. The premise of this statement is that the ancients must have the habit of keeping it simple, which is actually difficult to determine. As Li Ling, a professor in Peking University, said, "The most common mistake we make is' ruling the belly of the ancients with the heart of today'." For example, Oracle Bone Inscriptions is an "inconvenient" material, which is difficult to write and carve, but it was chosen as an important writing carrier in the early days. It can be seen that the ancients sometimes paid more attention to the purpose of writing, and convenience was second.

In this way, the second point still exists, which is the activity itself. Undoubtedly, Oracle Bone Inscriptions's divination occupies an absolute "discourse power" and has two innate advantages.

First of all, location advantage. "When the people are born, the alchemist will be the master." At that time, regardless of politics or life, divination could be used to guide all activities and had an unshakable position. Second, genetic advantage. Many scholars believe that the birth of Chinese characters is closely related to witches and their activities. Then, the formulation of rules related to the application of Chinese characters will largely follow the needs of witchcraft-related activities, and Oracle Bone Inscriptions divination is one of the most important witchcraft activities of ancestors.

From all this, we can easily find the key role of Oracle Bone Inscriptions's divination in establishing the basic style of lines.

Judging from the contents of Oracle bone inscriptions unearthed at present, most of them are the result of divination, that is, the text presentation of God's will expressed by Oracle bone inscriptions is a kind of "celestial phenomenon" from the gods. The top-down word order of bank funds coincides with this feature in form.

For this top-down "hanging sky image", we can also find several auxiliary evidences:

First, set the reading order of multiple paragraphs on the bone plate. If there are several sections of Oracle Bone Inscriptions on a complete bone plate, then the reading of these sections is from the bottom up, that is, from the next section, step by step in order. This is just in line with the process that the diviner asks questions first, then goes up step by step, and the gods on the ground give instructions, which is also in line with the essence of divination activities.

Second, the portrayal of the ancient concept of linking up and down. For example, in Liangzhu culture, the sacrificial bush is round outside and round inside. When it was erected, Fiona Fang was strung together, that is, it ran through the earth and the sky. In ancient times, sacrificial articles similar to this style also appeared in other places, such as Haifeng County at the southeast end of Guangdong Province, where jade cong similar to Liangzhu culture was found. Visible, the connection between heaven and earth, in the spiritual world of our ancestors, should be a concept of * * *. Isn't the top-down word order setting of Chinese characters an intuitive response to this connection between heaven and earth?

Third, the corresponding "arrival" and "download" methods. In ancient times, fire smoke was often used as a medium to worship "Shangda", which was from bottom to top; Then, the apocalyptic words that express the content of "passing down" are naturally from top to bottom.

Why is the order of rows from right to left?

The nature of Oracle Bone Inscriptions's divination activities determines the top-down word order of payment. What about the order of payment?

Starting from Oracle Bone Inscriptions's materials, it can usually be divided into several symmetrical regions. Because of this, we often see two ways of "lower left" and "lower right" for the beauty of symmetry, that is, freedom of line order. It can be seen that the line order is usually "bottom left", that is, the line order is mainly from right to left, and it is not Oracle Bone Inscriptions who plays a decisive role.

Is that a bamboo slip? At present, we haven't seen the bamboo slips unearthed in Oracle Bone Inscriptions at the same time, but this doesn't affect our discussion on the role of bamboo slips in establishing the basic style of lines.

David N. Keightley, a famous sinologist, once put forward the viewpoint of "Ren Zhen recorded notes", arguing that Ren Zhen in Shang Dynasty had notes as memos to record the divination matters at that time, and then carved Oracle Bone Inscriptions according to the records after divination. If such "notes" do exist, then the writing tools used may be Oracle Bone Inscriptions, bamboo slips or silk books. According to frequent divination activities and relatively easy writing and acquisition of bamboo slips, bamboo slips should be the most commonly used tool.

As an auxiliary bamboo slip, the word order from top to bottom is fixed, while the line order is relatively flexible. Over time, the constant word order has brought the fixation of keeping simple, and finally prompted bamboo slips to develop the most suitable line order for their own situation. Of course, if David N. Keightley's "notes" don't exist, according to the natural advantages of Oracle Bone Inscriptions's divination activities, the bamboo slips in a "disadvantage" should be in such a state-although there is no chance to determine the word order, they still have the "power" to determine the line order.

For bamboo slips, it is more convenient to write first and then edit, or edit first and then write, from right to left. Many scholars have made rich arguments about this. Here are some representative ones.

For the case of writing first and then compiling a book, Mr. Qian Cunxun mentioned in the Bamboo Silk Book that the left hand holds letters and the right hand writes, and the simple strategies that are easy to write are placed on the right side in order, from far to near, forming the habit of going from right to left. Mr. Lao Gan further explained in the preface of this book: left-handed writing, all empty slips are placed on the left, and well-written ones are placed on the right in order, forming a sequence from right to left, and finally binding comes from this.

Regarding the situation of editing first and then writing, Mr. Wang Fengyang thinks: "One of the reasons is the role of customary forces; The second reason is that writing is convenient. " "It is natural to write from the right and spread out the rolled Jane while writing. If you write from the left, a large roll of bamboo slips will be caught under your wrist, which will be very inconvenient to write, and it will be very troublesome to spread out the slips and move them. "

Accordingly, we find that the line order from right to left should come from the role of bamboo slips writing.

Through the cooperation of Oracle Bone Inscriptions's divination activities and bamboo slips, both Oracle Bone Inscriptions and bamboo slips formed their own line patterns: Oracle Bone Inscriptions line patterns-Oracle Bone Inscriptions is from top to bottom, from right to left or from left to right, and non-Oracle Bone Inscriptions is the same, except for tiger bones, which are basically from right to left; The lines on bamboo slips are from top to bottom and from right to left.

In this process, the glyphs "have to" make some cooperative adjustments, and at the same time, some new development directions have been obtained: cooperative adjustments, such as glyphs with large widths such as "horse" and "tiger", become upright for the unified demand of "top-down", while glyphs with too wide left and right sides such as "standard" and "dustpan" make both hands of the component move down. The new development direction, such as paying more attention to the relationship between upper and lower characters and ignoring the relationship between left and right characters, became the main starting point for later determining the writing order of glyphs, which had far-reaching influence.

However, the real establishment of the basic style of Chinese characters should be in the Zhou Dynasty. In the inheritance of Shang Dynasty, the Zhou Dynasty deliberately weakened or even abandoned Oracle Bone Inscriptions's divination method. "After the death of Shang Dynasty, the divination style in Oracle Bone Inscriptions declined", which simply continued the style of bamboo slips, uniformly using up and down, left and right lines, with few exceptions. Since then, the basic style of Chinese characters that have been used for thousands of years has been completely established. For other contents related to Chinese characters, please refer to the author's book "A New Theory of Chinese Character Graphology".

(The author is an associate professor at Hubei Academy of Fine Arts)

Bank (1) bamboo slips (1) Oracle bones (1)