A fairy tale about the origin of foreign characters

Indus civilization is naturally on both sides of the Indus River, but Indian civilization is not necessarily in India as a whole, and even the main areas are distributed in Pakistan and eastern Iran today. In fact, there are many sites of civilization in the Indus Valley, but I am most concerned about the Harappa civilization unearthed in some words-the name itself generally includes two "cities" or "cultural sites": Harappa and Mohenjo, the former can be counted from 3300 BC and the latter from 2600 BC. If the final result is that the origin of Chinese characters is most closely related to this place, I won't be surprised, nor should readers be surprised, because this cultural site is the closest to China and the most civilized place in China. However, the spread of civilization is a complicated matter, and there are many influencing factors, so it is not easy to link them. If it were simple, someone would have done it long ago.

China accepted many factors of Indian civilization, from Arabic numerals to Buddhism and medicine. The process of Indian civilization's introduction into China was just like that of China's introduction into Japan, and the flame of human civilization spread step by step in all directions. We can take the example of cultural communication to see how long it takes for words to reach China. Buddhism came into being in ancient India in 552 BC, and was introduced to China in a folk way about 200-300 years later, but it was not until the tenth year of Yongping in the later Han Dynasty (AD 67) that the "government" of China officially invited Buddhism. To sum up, that is to say, it only took about 300 to 500 years for this culture to be introduced into China. I think the process of hundreds of years is also credible for such a complex system as words.

It is generally believed that the Harapa culture flourished between 2350 BC-BC 1750, and suddenly disappeared after 500 years. As for the reason, there are various speculations. My own view is that this incident may be related to Aryans' sudden entry into the South Asian subcontinent from the northwest around 2000 BC. The Aryans' route just crossed the Indus River in an "X" shape, cutting off the original civilized order of the Indus River. In any case, these two very distinctive and prosperous cities suddenly fell, and they don't even know where their residents went or which nationality they belong to. If this civilized force enters China, is it possible? They will at least bring their own characters, and 300 years from BC18th century (escape) to BC15th century (the appearance of Chinese characters) is a "reasonable" time. Of course, it can be counted from the middle of the prosperous period, and it can be increased by another 200 years, which probably depends on the population of China.

It should be noted that the Harappa writing system is not a particularly developed and complete writing system, I think so. Because there are basically no long characters, most of them are seals with three or five characters. It is said that 2000 cultural relics with characters have been found, of which 1755 is a seal-all of them are similar. I often think that I saw the same one, but I found different seals from the subtleties. The longest word is 20. This lucky discovery has only happened twice, and the rest are short inscriptions of 3 or 5 words. Because the characters are too short and there are no reference characters, so far this writing system has not been deciphered. But it may also be an attractive place, so fans all over the world are trying, and people keep claiming to have decoded it. Recently, I saw a message that someone claimed that Harappa characters belonged to alphabetic characters, but I immediately saw someone refute it. It is generally believed that Indus script belongs to ideographic symbols and syllables, or a combination of both.

I think Harappa script is probably not the mature and rigorous writing system of ancient Egypt and Sumer, but only a semi-finished product, or a very simple commercial script, which can be seen from their lack of a country. They are just some commercial cities.

Among the few Indus scripts I collected, I found several traces closely related to China scripts at a glance. Let's try to talk about a few:

1, Sanxingdui is basically a culture without any words (because most of its sacrificial pits and so on were before the Shang dynasty's words were complete), but among several simple symbols, there is an extremely special symbol that is basically the same in two places ((the one on the left below). This is atypical, and the ancient Chinese characters are unstable and irregular, so it is normal to have small differences, usually there are two lines on both sides of the mouth and other collocations. I have never found such a symbol in the area west of the Indus River. This symbol in the Indus River means a sacred object full of water, mainly used for sacrifice, and later it means "priest". This kind of writing is a good match among Sanxingdui cultural relics with strong religious significance. In addition to this strange symbol in Sanxingdui and Indus River, there are sporadic discoveries in Southeast Asia. In fact, an uninterrupted communication route from Sanxingdui to Indus River has been built. In addition, the number of times this symbol appears in the Indus River is 1395, which is basically the first character with the highest frequency. So it's not surprising that there is a day in one of the few symbols like Sanxingdui.

2. To my great surprise, the same symbol as China's "big" and Oracle Bone Inscriptions's actually appeared in the Indus civilization, and there is no difference between them (the fourth word under the "fine" line in the picture below). But for the time being, I don't know what sound it makes in the Indus River and what it means. This is by no means accidental. Because the humanoid characters in China's Chinese characters are treated in this way, it will involve a large number of Chinese characters in China. In other words, during the Oracle Bone Inscriptions period, the expression of humanoid characters mostly adopted the Indus way. In addition, the two systems of the overall writing form are the same, such as line hieroglyphics, which gives me an important revelation. Indus civilization plays a vital role in the origin of Chinese characters in China. But it is not clear whether this is caused by the migration of Indus River in Shang Dynasty, or whether it was accumulated in the early stage, or whether they finally inspired the creation of Chinese characters. In a word, I think the Indus civilization is the latest catalyst for the production of Chinese characters. However, China's Chinese characters are not copied from the Chinese characters of Indus, but the relationship between "coach" and "athlete".

3. I only look at the relevant information occasionally. On the same day, I accidentally discovered the possibility of another Indus script appearing in Oracle Bone Inscriptions. They are also very similar in appearance. Oracle Bone Inscriptions mainly involves divination and sacrifice. A large number of Oracle Bone Inscriptions are used to explain the sacrifice to the ancestors of kings and the match between kings. One of the words keeps repeating, and a word appears in the middle (see the third word on the left in the picture above). Everyone has a different opinion, and celebrities' explanations are almost different. But for some reason, Luo Zhenyu interpreted it as "Hz". Shimabangnan denied his explanation, and finally his opinion focused on the meaning of "woman". If we compare and interpret a word from the Indus River, I think "he" may make sense, but it is indeed a generic word. Its real meaning is "He" and "Zai". In Indus civilization, the word "undertaker" means "undertaker" in English, which is generally extended to "official". The so-called "public servants with burdens" are also people who have something in their hands. Some scholars in China call it "Shuang" or "Shi". , are inferred from the shape. Shimabangnan and others finally recognized the word as "woman", which may be related to Guo Moruo's sarcastic explanation; He said it looked like a man had two breasts on his chest, but in the end it was very close to his story. But now the explanation comes from phonetics, saying that only "woman" and "dance" are allowed, and the word is said to have been pronounced "dance" originally. And I think whatever it means, it may be from the Indus River (borrowed) (this word is close to the leftmost word on the top seal, but it is not this word yet). There is no need to have a sound-meaning connection when borrowing words. There have been many examples of such mutual reference in philology, but they have only begun to take shape.

In addition to the above symbols, most of the "seal script" I have seen can be found in the same or similar forms in Oracle Bone Inscriptions (of course, not in the form of seal script, but simplified as lines). There is also one of the "Five Sacrifices" in Shang Dynasty, whose characters can't be defined so far, and that font is close to the things or symbols under Kirin's mouth that appear in almost every Indus seal. Experts who study the Indus civilization have five theories about this symbol which always appears. One of them thinks that it is a sacrificial object, and I think the same is true of the sacrificial ceremony in China, which may mean "burning incense".

4. There are some other factors. Indus script is called "seal script", almost without exception, each seal has a stout animal that is not a cow, a rhinoceros or a pig. Most of them can be seen as unicorns, so people call these seals "unicorn seals". During the Shang and Zhou Dynasties in China, there were two kinds of Kirin. One is double-horned, looks very docile, and is considered as a giraffe in Africa. China also has a unicorn with one horn. "Shuo Wen Jie Zi" says: "Qi, the benevolent beast, the horn of oxtail; (Lin) You too. " Kirin is one of the traditional "Four Spirits" in China. It is a god beast, peaceful, auspicious, long-lived and auspicious. But where is its source? During the Spring and Autumn Period, people in the State of Qi must be familiar with the unicorn on the seal of the Indus River, because one of the popular animal models there is the gorgeous animal in the Indus River with armor and helmet and extremely heavy decoration. Check again. During the Spring and Autumn Period, China went from Shaanxi to Hunan. It can be said that there were so-called "sacrifices" similar to unicorns all over the country, accompanied by many conspicuous elephants. So similar, and only in the Far East and the Indus Valley, this semi-fictional animal, I think there is an obvious communication relationship between them. Shandong is the hometown of merchants, and there are many foreign lineages in the DNA of the tombs of Qi nobles. This should not be a coincidence.

Now people are still studying Indian unicorns. I don't know what it means. Maybe China people can tell those scholars the story of China unicorn. It's that simple. It is an auspicious beast that keeps you safe. However, the so-called unicorn seals are not really all "one-horned" animals, some have two horns like bulls, and some may have no horns at all, just one more horn. Presumably, they are actually the same thing, but because they are imaginary animals, as long as they look the same, they can be worshipped devoutly. Whether there are horns or not is probably not so important. ("Sacrifice" was unearthed in Shaanxi, China, during the Warring States Period)

In fact, judging from this magnificent "unicorn" and the complicated and solemn bronze decoration style that Shandong businessmen suddenly rose, I wonder if this is all influenced by the Indus civilization.

(China, bronze sacrifice of Shandong Qi State)

5. China people think that China is the only nation with "seal culture" in the world, which is of course a series of fallacies or narrow examples of "independent origin", which have been broken. What I want to point out here is that the inheritance relationship between China's seal and the Indus seal script is the most obvious, because most of the ancient seals in China are square, with little or no circle or roller shape, while the Indus seal is only a square version of China.

With the above speculation, let's take a look at several characteristics of the Indus civilization, almost all of which are aimed at our wishes. Harappa and Mohenjodaro people live on the big river. Because the climate was particularly hot and humid earlier, there must have been many adjacent lakes in that area about 4000 years ago. They are very good at using water, but water avoidance and drainage are also essential in their lives. Therefore, these two city-states are famous for their superb urban architectural pattern and drainage facilities. The drainage facilities in China during the Shang and Zhou Dynasties seem to be particularly developed, and the Qi State in Shandong seems to take this as a symbol (part two).

The people in the two Indus cities are mainly businessmen, and they are called "business geniuses". Their main targets are Sumerians and ancient Egyptians in the two river basins, and there are a lot of written evidence of business exchanges between the two places. These people have no intention of plotting a political country, only in business. They developed agriculture, especially pottery and metallurgy, used transportation, owned almost all commonly used domesticated animals known at present, and were good at sailing on water. They also established a trading port at the mouth of the Indus River. Chinese characters began in 2600 BC. Up to now, * * * has collected about 500 seal scripts, which are written from right to left. The main purpose of those seals is to show the ownership of objects, while others have religious or witchcraft significance.

Here we have an important problem: the more developed commercial points are generally connected with both ends of supply and demand. If you know that one end of these businessmen is a luxury consumer group in Liangjiang and even ancient Egypt, where is the other end? The geographical location of the Indus River gives us a clear answer: Far East, Southeast Asia and South Asia. As for their route to China, I think they mainly enter China through Kunlun Mountain, but obviously they will not give up the southern waterway, which may be one of the reasons for the developed Shandong civilization near the sea. But it is not clear whether they became attached to Dawenkou culture, Longshan culture or the early Shang Dynasty more than 4,000 years ago. In particular, some coastal cities in Shandong, such as Rizhao and other places, are as developed as black pottery, which seems to imply the busy existence of coastal waterways, otherwise it is not necessary for Shandong people to set up ports by the sea. This clue seems to explain why there were a large number of blacks in China during the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, because there were many blacks in life in south.

I even doubt that they have anything to do with painted pottery culture and black pottery culture in China. I saw pictures showing that the two city-states still have hill-like pieces of red pottery. Is that the origin of red pottery? Then I saw their high-quality white pottery and black pottery in a video. But why is China divided into two relatively independent regions?

As for the primitive race in the Indus Valley, there are also different opinions. Some people think it's Dravidian, others think it's Sumerian or Aryan. I think it may be a mixed crowd, because ancient people didn't pay much attention to the distinction between races. It shouldn't be surprising that they are mainly Dalopita people, just as China was mainly Mongols and other races at that time. Dravidians are darker in color, so they are more yellow than China. If these people are really related to the creation of Chinese characters, then the skin color characteristics of these people can't help but make people think that China's characters are myths created by the Yellow Emperor historian Cang Xie. The legendary Yellow Emperor in China lived from 5000 years ago to the Western Zhou Dynasty. If they lived in the Shang Dynasty, there would be no logical problem. The yellow skin of the Yellow Emperor shows the main characteristics of his non-white. Does the Yellow Emperor come from the Indus Valley? Is he the emperor of Shang Dynasty? If Chinese characters were indeed created in the Pan Geng Dynasty, it can be inferred that Pan Geng was actually the legendary Yellow Emperor. Pan Geng is a special figure, so it makes sense to say that he is the "Yellow Emperor" of China. Even according to modern anthropology, it can be said that "Chinese civilization" began in Pan Geng, because one of the five characteristics of "civilization" in anthropological sense must have people. There is another saying about Pangu that seems to be related to Pan Geng, which can be discussed later. Pan Geng reigned for 42 years (? If a promising king is in office for such a long time, he can really make some great achievements.

Why the languages spoken by the inhabitants of the Indus Valley are also a topic of constant debate among experts, from ancient Tamil of Dravidian family to Vedic Aryan and Indo-European. However, what these people say does not affect people in another language family to borrow and use their words. Language and writing can be separated. However, it is still a question what language people in Shang Dynasty in China spoke, so don't worry.

In any case, the existing evidence can show that there is indeed a close and complicated relationship between China and the disappearing Indus civilization. However, it is obvious that Chinese characters (Oracle Bone Inscriptions) and "seal script" are not completely corresponding systems, because there are only a few hundred "seal scripts", and more than 4,000 have been discovered in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, which shows that Chinese characters are much more developed than "seal script" in quantity. But I have no doubt that one of the most important writing systems used for reference in the creation of Chinese characters is "seal script", and even some exiled Indus people directly participated in the creation of Chinese characters, just as the initial spread of Buddhism was actually directly operated by some Indian monks. Therefore, the hasty conclusion is that the most direct basis of Chinese characters in China is Harappa characters!