of Chinese writing (and of the characters to be adopted much later by the Japanese) widely recognized among scholars is what is known as oracle bone script, sometimes referred to as OBI (for ‘oracle bone inscriptions’). This dates back to the later part of the Shang Dynasty.
The oracle bone script is so called because typically it is written on bones that were the shoulder blades of cattle, or sometimes on the underside of turtle shells. These were flattish surfaces which were reasonably easy to use for writing. A knife-like instrument was used to scratch characters or graphs (these two words are used with the same meaning in this book) on the bone or shell surface, hence the angular appearance at this stage. In some cases, a text was written first onto the bone with a writing brush, and then incised. Writing at this very early period in China was used by a small minority, centered on the Shang rulers, for such purposes as enquiring about the outcome of future events such as a battle, harvest, or childbirth, hence the term ‘oracle bones’.
Although the oracle bone texts—typically fragmentary in nature—date back more than two thousand years, they were only brought to light (rediscovered) in relatively recent times. In 1899, 劉鶚 Liu E, a Chinese scholar who was looking for material to make up traditional Chinese medicine, purchased some bone fragments. These were fragments which had been unearthed by farmers when plowing, and they were known as ‘dragon bones’, based on the belief that dragons shed their bones. Liu happened to notice some unusual scratching on the fragments. Being familiar with how the early Chinese script looked, and guessing that these markings probably represented a still earlier stage of Chinese writing, he decided to purchase more of the bone fragments. His study of these fragments led to confirmation that this was indeed an ancient stage of Chinese writing, and a stage earlier than what had been recognized until then. This was a very important discovery, and marked the point of departure for the scientific study of the oracle bone script.
1.2 Seal Script (篆書 Ch. zhuanshu, J. tensho)
The ancient variety of the Chinese script known as seal script is divided into two varieties: ‘great seal’ (大篆 Ch. dazhuan, J. daiten) and ‘small seal’ (少篆 Ch. xiaozhuan, J. shōten). Some of the examples of great seal script—the older variety—found on bronze vessels date back in some cases to a period no later than that of the oracle bone inscriptions, i.e., the latter part of the Shang Dynasty. The situation has been summed up by the noted Chinese scholar Qiu Xigui as follows: ‘The practice of casting inscriptions on bronzes initially grew in popularity in the latter half of the Shang period and reached its zenith during the Zhou.’ (QX2000:62). Reflecting the fact that before the Qin Dynasty (221–206 BC) bronze was referred to as 金 (Ch. jin, J. kin), characters on ancient bronzes are sometimes known alternatively as 金文 (Ch. jinwen, J. kinbun). Great seal characters of very early date often occur in a very short sequence of a few characters or even just one, and are notable for their ornateness compared to those on oracle bones. In shape, the great seal forms tend to be characterized by soft curves and varying stroke width, contrasting with the thin angularity of the oracle bone characters. In a given text, individual characters can vary considerable in size. The ornate great seal characters were ill-suited for practical purposes, and so the evolution of less impractical shapes was really a natural development, though this does not mean that utilitarian considerations were all-consuming: aesthetic considerations were still very important. A degree of simplification in shape compared with great seal can be seen in many cases in the small seal forms, which were very actively promoted—with the incentive of punishment for those who transgressed—in the Qin Dynasty under Emperor Shi Huangdi (the self-styled ‘First Emperor’) as part of his strategy to unify the land under his rule. Small seal forms were preserved for posterity in the following Han Dynasty (Early Han Dynasty: 206 BC–24 AD; Later Han Dynasty: 25–220 AD) in the character dictionary entitled Shuowen jiezi (Explanation of Indivisible Characters and Analysis of Compound Characters) completed ca.100AD by Xu Shen (for details, see Section 5 [‘Early and Pre-Modern Character Dictionaries’]). In terms of Chinese writing, this was a pioneering work which soon became an indispensable reference for later scholars working on the script, and this remains true through to the present day. In the Early Han period, small seal was still the official script, but the clerical script was gaining in popularity.
1.3 Clerical Script (隷書 Ch. lishu, J. reisho)
While small seal was promoted as the official script during the Qin Dynasty, for practical purposes it was still quite cumbersome. To overcome this, an abbreviated variety of the small seal script came to be used for record-keeping, known as lishu ‘clerical script’ (sometimes translated as ‘scribe script’). While its use appears to have been promoted by the needs of an expanding government administration, according to Qiu Xigui the beginnings of clerical script can be traced back to the Warring States period (475–221 BC). It is fair to say that clerical script represents the early stage of what was later to become the modern character script, as most of the characters in clerical script are recognisable to us today. While initially a practical script type in nature, over time clerical script also developed a dimension of aesthetic refinement, and thereby acquired respectability. By the Later Han period, clerical script was accepted as the official script, and small seal was retained for ornamental purposes.
1.4 Block Script (楷書 Ch. kaishu, J. kaisho)
Also known in English variously as standard script, regular script, or model script. The kai of kaishu/kaisho means ‘standard, a model’. In this book, this stage is referred to as ‘block script’. It is difficult to pinpoint the time when block script evolved from clerical script, but in broad terms this development took place towards the end of the Later Han Dynasty. Compared with clerical script, characters in block script tend to be modestly less undulating and slightly more square in appearance, are readily legible (as far as is possible for often intricate shapes), yet at the same time retain an aesthetically pleasing aspect. The merits of block script have seen it endure and occupy the position of a standard over the centuries and down to the present.
1.5 Cursive Script Forms
While the block script has strong merits, it is quite a slow way of writing characters, and inevitably quicker ways of writing evolved, later to be quite commonly broadly categorized as semi-cursive script (行書 Ch. xingshu, J. gyōsho) and cursive script (草書 Ch. caoshu, J. sōsho). For caoshu/sōsho, which are terms sometimes translated literally into English as ‘grass script’ but more appropriately rendered as ‘cursive script’, Qiu Xigui notes both broad and narrow meanings: the broad sense refers to any characters of any period past or present-day written hastily, while the narrow sense is limited to characters written in certain historical periods or modelled thereon (QX2000:130–31). In the present book, the term ‘cursive script’ is used only infrequently, and will be reserved for characters written with an advanced degree of cursivity (i.e., advanced degradation in shape compared with characters written slowly and carefully), while ‘semi-cursive script’ will be used to denote modest cursivity (limited degradation of shape compared with slowly and carefully written equivalents). At times, the term ‘cursivized’ may also be used in this book as a convenient way to indicate character text written with a degree of rapidity, without going into the question of greater or lesser degree. It is worth highlighting here that cursivized characters began to appear as early as the Warring States period, also marking the emergence of clerical script forms as an entity born out of the small seal script. In everyday (non-formal) usage today, as in the past, texts in Chinese and Japanese written by hand tend to exhibit a modest degree of cursivity.
2 Formational Principles of the Chinese Script
The earliest stage of Chinese writing dates back to the period from about the 14th to the 10th century BC. The script at that time (on oracle bones and bronze vessels) clearly has a strong pictorial dimension. Yet it is not ‘picture writing’, i.e., texts of that period do not represent a situation in an approximate way pictorially and without reference to language—a convention or system that we might think of as a forerunner of writing proper. Rather, texts already represented a full writing system, i.e., each character or graph represented a word or morpheme (for explanation of ‘morpheme’, see section 8.2