Hard pen calligraphy is a brilliant flower in the hundred gardens of calligraphy art. Its writing instruments include pens, ballpoint pens, dip pens, pencils, plastic pens, bamboo pens, wooden pens, iron pens, etc., with ink as the main carrier to express Chinese character writing skills. In the eyes of modern people, the mention of hard pen calligraphy will always naturally associate the fountain pen that was born about 200 years ago, but the many cultural relics unearthed in Dunhuang prove that as early as 2,000 years ago, dunhuang area has been very common to use a variety of hard pen writing, just like the common use of brushes.
▲ Double-petaled pointed bamboo pipe pen found in 1972 at the site of Zhangyibao in Wuwei, Gansu Province.
The recent research results of Chinese experts show that the ancient Chinese hard pen has a relationship with the modern pen, and as early as the invention of the Western pen in the 19th century, Chinese began to use a wooden pen with a split tongue and a double-petaled and pointed tip. In 1907, the Englishman Stein found a three-branch double-petaled sharp reed pipe pen (about the 3rd century AD) in the ruins of Milan in Xinjiang, and in 1972, Chinese archaeologists found a three-branch double-petaled sharp bamboo pipe pen (about the 12th century AD) in the ruins of Zhangyibao in Wuwei, Gansu Province.
▲ Part of the fragment of "Li Zhao's Miscellaneous Songs"
The use of hard pens in Dunhuang manuscripts has lasted for more than 1,200 years through the Han, Tang, Song and Yuan dynasties of China. The Li Zhao Zao Yong, now in the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, is the earliest Hard Pen Manuscript in Chinese found in Dunhuang, written during the Tang Dynasty calendar (766-779 AD); the Linger Stein's Zanglu Silk Book taken from the Dunhuang Beacon Site is a more ancient hard pen work, written in the 1st century AD at the end of the Western Han Dynasty; the "Ode to the Club House" collected in the Tianli Library in Japan is the latest Chinese hard pen manuscript found in Dunhuang. It was written around the Yuan Dynasty in the 13th century AD.
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After years of collation and research, Dunhuang scholars recently proposed that the more than 20,000 pages of hard pen writing preserved in Dunhuang literature have overthrown the old saying that there is no hard pen calligraphy in ancient China with "physical objects" and broken the old historical view of Chinese calligraphy that brush calligraphy "unifies the world".
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Li Zhengyu, a researcher at the Dunhuang Research Institute and a member of the Academic Theory Committee of the China Hard Pen Calligraphers Association, said: "The discovery and research of Dunhuang hard pen writing has undoubtedly proved the existence and popularity of hard pen writing in the practical field of ancient China, filled a large gap in the history of Chinese hard pen calligraphy, completely negated the old theory that Chinese hard pen calligraphy began in the Opium War for decades, and advanced the history of Chinese hard pen calligraphy by 2,000 years."
▲ Bhikshuni Zhenjing and Zhenhui sacrifice Xue Jian Liwen
It has been learned that the Dunhuang hard-pen manuscripts that have been discovered and identified have reached more than 20,000 pages, mostly on paper, but also on silk; there are Chinese, but also in The Jurchen, Sogdian, Sanskrit, Turkic, Khotanese, Tubo, Uighur, Western Xia, and other more than ten ancient ethnic scripts; the content of the writing involves literary works, deed letters, sutra essays, and Buddhist scriptures; and the use of calligraphy includes hard-pen letters, xingshu, cursive, and cursive writing.
▲ Fragment of the Dunhuang document "The Poem of "Cultivating Blessings in Previous Lives"
There is a brush letter (second line on the right) and a hard line of grass (second line on the left)
Scholars have pointed out that the study of Dunhuang hard pen writing has opened a new era in the study of the history of Chinese calligraphy. Pang Zhonghua, Zhou Shengzun, Sun Dunxiu, Wang Xinong and other well-known figures in the Chinese calligraphy and calligraphy circles have made high praise for this, and their Dunhuang hard pen research is "a major discovery to fill the gap in the history of Chinese calligraphy", so that people can see "the refraction of the history of the development of Chinese hard pen calligraphy", and "the study of Chinese character hard pen calligraphy is of great guiding significance".
Due to the frequent occurrence and destruction of wars and natural disasters in history, from the current situation, the ancient paper and paper hard pen documents in other parts of China have almost been scattered, but the Dunhuang hard pen manuscript has been preserved due to its special geographical location and climatic environment. As a precious historical document, the Dunhuang Hard Pen Manuscript rewrites the history of Chinese calligraphy in "physical objects", while allowing people to see a world that has never been discovered from the window of "Dunhuang": Chinese hard pen calligraphy is not only a hundred years of history, and ancient Chinese calligraphy is not a brush that dominates the world.