A Brief History of Chinese Calligraphy

Author: Tang Damin / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2001-05-01
Features:
1 represents a grass radical plus a cutting radical
2 represents a feather radical below a character
3 represents
4 represents water radical plus an opening radical
5 represents a medical radical plus a character without the handle
Ten thousand oaths cannot withstand betrayal in the mortal world, but the art of calligraphy can exist alongside jade and stone.
, also known as "oath inscriptions," were treaties and oaths established between feudal states, among feudal states and their ministers, during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods.
During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, the supreme ruler, the Zhou, lost political authority, and feudal states vied for dominance, engaging in conquest and annexation. Alliances and oaths became an important means of forming factions, regulating and expanding political power. According to the Zuo Zhuan, in the 254 years from the first year of Lord Yin of Lu (722 BC) to the 27th year of Lord Ai of Lu (468 BC), there were nearly 200 alliances between feudal states. The activities of making oaths were deeply rooted in religion; all participants had to swear to uphold the treaties, and those who violated them would suffer divine punishment. At that time, personal integrity and credibility had almost vanished, and the world was filled with bullying the weak, treachery, broken promises, and betrayal. Without international law or courts to restrain and punish, people had to rely on the power of gods for.
recorded the oaths of the allied parties and were filled with warnings like "gods will watch the traitors with keen eyes and exterminate their clans." The Rites of Zhou·Autumn Officer·Chief of Oaths notes: "The inscriptions of oaths were written on bamboo slips, and after sacrificing animals and collecting blood, the slips were buried after being placed on top of the animals." The discovery of these inscriptions later confirmed the correctness of Zheng Xuan's annotation.
were unearthed twice on a large scale. The first was in the 1960s and 1970s at the site of the Jin State in Houma, Shanxi, where about 5,000 pieces were found, with over 600 having clear inscriptions. The second was in the Han family tomb pit in Wen County, Henan, where only the first pit contained as many as 4,588 pieces. Both sets of inscriptions were written during the late Spring and Autumn period (Guo Moruo believed the Houma inscriptions were from the mid-Zhou period, around 386 BC).
The materials of the inscriptions were jade and stone, with stone being more numerous. The shapes were mostly gu-shaped, with jade inscriptions also including huang-shaped forms. The sizes varied, with the largest being 32 cm long and 3.8 cm wide, while the smallest were 15 cm long and 2 cm wide. The number of characters per inscription varied, ranging from over 10 to as many as 220. The content included categories such as "clan alliances," "pledges," "marriages," "curses," and "divination."
As official documents, the inscriptions were mostly written by clerks such as diviners and historians. The calligraphy of the inscriptions was highly variable, with multiple forms of the same character, arbitrary additions or deletions of strokes or radicals, and numerous simplified and combined characters. In The Houma Inscriptions, a single character like "" had over 100 variations, and the character "" had over 90. Even for the Jin State alone, the diversity of characters among the six states can be imagined. However, this chaos also had its advantages, displaying diversity and richness in aesthetic composition.
The most significant contribution of the inscriptions to the history of calligraphy is that all oaths were written with brushes on jade and stone, with the inscriptions typically in vermilion or ink. The script was known as "turtle-shell script," or "ancient Eastern script," as described by Wang Guowei. While brush calligraphy had already emerged in oracle bone script, later bronze inscriptions were also mostly written with brushes before being cast or engraved. However, the processing of engraving and casting affected the brushwork, while the inscriptions retained the complete brushwork of the pre-Qin period.
Zong Baihua once mentioned the two major origins of Chinese calligraphy, one of which was the use of brushes. The inscriptions were all small characters, with calligraphic features such as heavy starting strokes forming "silkworm heads" or "nail heads," rapid and short strokes, elastic lines, slightly arched horizontal strokes, and a lack of straightness. The ending strokes were swift and abrupt, with some characters showing pauses, and vertical strokes often had a curved quality, lacking perpendicularity. The relationships between strokes were clearly marked with yielding and respect, creating a sense of "broken ink with lingering breath." The characters tended to be square but internally expansive, maintaining a sense of rotational charm in their structure.
At that time, brush craftsmanship was rough, with limited ink capacity, so characters with many strokes often appeared uneven in thickness, with variations between wet and dry ink. Yet, this very characteristic inspired a conscious pursuit of dry and wet ink tones and stroke rhythms. Theness of the inscriptions and the pursuit of simplicity led to the development of clerical script and the early embryo of cursive script aesthetics.
The oath-making activities were sacred and solemn in a religious sense, and the oaths were highly binding contracts. However, instead of adopting the form of bronze inscriptions, they used brush calligraphy on gu-shaped jade and stone. This was likely due to the excessive frequency of oath-making and the abundance of inscriptions. Copper was scarce at the time, and the casting and engraving of bronze inscriptions were too complex to meet the needs of the inscriptions.
The Houma inscriptions, numbering over 5,000 pieces, were written in about a year and recorded an alliance between the ruler of Zhao and his family members and officials after suppressing an internal rebellion, requiring them to swear allegiance and fight against common enemies. The urgency of the time and the vast scope of the writing task made it difficult to use bronze for casting and engraving. Thus, stone and jade pieces became the best substitutes. It can be inferred that the method of engraving was also unsuitable for the needs of the time, leading to the adoption of direct writing.
The calligraphic styles of the inscriptions varied, with some being rigorous, others delicate, and some unrestrained. However, their common feature was rapid and concise writing. To achieve this, strokes became simplified, and smooth, flowing brushwork with natural connections emerged, paving the way for the future development of clerical and cursive scripts. It can be said that practical needs gave rise to the stone and jade calligraphy of the inscriptions, while aesthetic genes adapted to changes in writing purposes.
2. Solitary Peak, "The Stone Drum Script" Establishes "Calligraphic Rules."
In addition to brush calligraphy, there were also inscriptions carved into stone. Pre-Qin stone inscriptions were rare, except for the few inscriptions on artifacts found in the Fu Hao tomb. Long periods of followed. In 1978, 22 stone chimes (a type of percussion instrument) were unearthed from the tomb of Zeng Hou Yi in Suixian, Hubei, during the Warring States period. One of the chimes had 20 characters carved on its right side in negative relief, filled with vermilion, with a style similar to the bronze inscriptions of the Chu state, written with a free and unrestrained brush. In the same tomb area, a stone inscription called "Shouqiu Inscription" or "He Guang Inscription" was discovered in the late Warring States period. It had 19 characters in two lines, each character about 3 to 4 cm long, recording an announcement that the officials Geng Cheng and Man were appointed by the king to manage the tomb. The style of the inscriptions was casual, with loose spacing between lines, giving a folk-like charm. Strictly speaking, these inscriptions cannot be considered works of calligraphy.
The representative of pre-Qin stone calligraphy, the most outstanding stone inscriptions in history, and an outstanding summary of calligraphic art during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, is the Stone Drum Script.
The Stone Drum Script consists of ten four-character rhyming poems carved in a circular pattern on ten granite drums (each about 60 cm high and 90 cm in diameter). The style and poetic form resemble those of the Book of Songs. Later, based on the content of the rhymes, they were named Making Origin, Er Shi, Ma Zhen, Wo Shui, Wu Ren, Wo Che, 45, Tian Che, Luan Che, and Xu (Ling) Yu. The poems recorded the grand scenes of the Qin rulers' hunting and entertainment. Based on the original stones, there should have been over 600 characters on the ten drums, but due to the passage of time, the inscriptions are now heavily damaged. One drum has no characters, the second has only numbers, and the rest are mostly incomplete. Only 272 characters remain today. The original stones are now housed in the Palace Museum. The earliest rubbings are three Northern Song Dynasty rubbings from the Shizhuguan collection of the An family in Xishan (all trimmed and mounted), namely the Xianfeng, Zhongquan, and Houjin editions. The Xianfeng edition is the oldest. Among the copies, the one by Wu Changshuo in the late Qing Dynasty is considered the most lifelike.
The Stone Drum Script is a mystery of calligraphy.
Mystery one: It rises like an isolated peak, standing alone, especially solitary. In the art of stone inscriptions, the craftsmanship is exquisite, and the artistic achievement is unparalleled, with no predecessors and no equals at the time. Even throughout the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, there were no successors.
Mystery two: While bronze inscriptions also had rhyming styles, they were always to ritual and musical instruments, recording the reasons for their creation, the names of the creators, and their clans. The Stone Drum Script provides none of this, only ten rhyming poems. So, what was the purpose of these stone drums? What role did they serve? And where did this form of inscription originate?
Mystery three: The dating of the Stone Drum Script has been debated for over a thousand years. According to the Yuanhe Prefecture Gazetteer, the Stone Drum Script was first unearthed in the early Tang Dynasty in Tianxing County, "about twenty li south, with stones shaped like drums, with ten of them." The location is now part of Fengxiang County, Shaanxi.