Huang Dekuan: A historical picture of the evolution of Chinese character civilization

The author is the chief expert of the major project "General History of Chinese Character Development" of the National Social Science Foundation of China, and the director and professor of the Research and Protection Center of Excavated Documents of Tsinghua University

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Chinese characters are the only self-derived classical writing system in the world with a long history and continuous use for thousands of years, and Chinese character civilization constitutes the most brilliant chapter of Chinese civilization. On the one hand, Chinese characters record the rise and fall of Chinese civilization for thousands of years; on the other hand, Chinese characters have continuously evolved, changed and developed in the context of Chinese civilization. Due to the unique properties of Chinese characters, in a sense, it is difficult to obtain a thorough understanding and accurate understanding of the broad and profound Chinese civilization without a deep understanding of the historical development of Chinese characters and their laws. To this end, in 2011, the National Social Science Foundation set up a major scientific research project on the "General History of Chinese Character Development". The 12-volume "General History of the Development of Chinese Characters" (hereinafter referred to as "General History"), as a national key book in the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, will be published by the Commercial Press.

The General History strives to depict the history of the formation and development of the Chinese character system in a panoramic manner, comprehensively examines the shape, structure and actual use of Chinese characters in different historical periods, and deeply reveals the historical trajectory of the development of Chinese characters and the basic laws they follow, so as to show the historical picture of the development and evolution of Chinese character civilization. According to the overall process of the development of the Chinese character system, the General History divides the evolution of Chinese character civilization into three major historical stages: the formation of Chinese characters, ancient characters and modern characters.

The late Neolithic period to the Xia Dynasty is the stage from the early carved symbols to the formation of the Chinese character system. The creation of carved symbols in various cultural communities in the late Neolithic period is the source of the formation of Chinese characters. After the construction of the script generation mechanism, the exploration of the method of character symbol creation and the choice of path, the Early Chinese Character Stage of the Xia Dynasty has developed from the original script to the systematic.

From the Yin Shang to the Qin Dynasty is the paleography stage. Yinshang oracle bone is the earliest mature text symbol system seen so far, pictograms, finger things, meaning, shape and sound and other basic configuration methods have been developed, symbol writing has established a relatively strict rules, the use of homophone pseudo-borrowing phenomenon is very prominent, oracle bone has fully equipped with the function of recording language. During the Western Zhou Dynasty, the increase in complexity, simplification, substitution and falsification of Chinese character forms were the main evolutionary phenomena, and the figurative characteristics of glyphs in the early Western Zhou Dynasty were obvious, and after the middle and late period, writing gradually became linearized, and glyphs became symmetrical and regular. The shape-sound configuration method has become the main word-making method, about 80% of the new words are shape-sound structures, and the word-building function of other configuration methods tends to shrink. The standardization of Western Zhou writing and the trend of shape and sound of the shape mode are the main manifestations of the development of the Chinese character system in this period. The Spring and Autumn script is in the development stage of inheriting the past and the future, and the evolution of the font continues the linear trend since the Western Zhou Jinwen, and the shape is more symmetrical and neat, which further weakens the pictography of the glyph and accelerates the process of symbolization of the form. The formation of shape and sound structure was the most important forming method in the Spring and Autumn Period, and more than 90% of the newly added characters were shape sound characters, reflecting the further optimization of the Chinese character configuration system. Spring and Autumn characters began to show some regional characteristics in terms of font style and word habits. During the Warring States period, the shape-sound configuration became almost the only way of forming, and the newly emerged characters were basically shape-sound structures, and the shape-sound of the shape-sounded structure showed that the Chinese character configuration system had been developed and perfected. The word relationship and word usage habits of the Warring States script are extremely complex, and the regional characteristics of different faunal scripts are more distinct. The Qin script inherits the Western Zhou script, and after the development of the Spring and Autumn Warring States, the qin dynasty formed the final form of ancient writing - xiao seal. In the Qin system, there were elements of font innovation, and the dissolution of the seal law was common, and the early lishu was gradually formed.

After the further subordination of the Chinese character system at the time of the Qin and Han Dynasties, the transformation of ancient and modern forms was finally realized, and it entered a new stage of historical development in modern times. During the Two Han Dynasties, it was mainly the change, adjustment and standardization of form, and the functional division of labor of the text tended to be clear. From the beginning of the Han Dynasty to the early period of Emperor Wu, the Chinese character system completed the stereotyping of lishu fonts. From the late Period of Emperor Wu to the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Lishu entered a period of adjustment and development, and new calligraphy such as new Lishu and cursive scripts representing the development direction of Chinese characters gradually became the mainstream of writing. After experiencing this stage of development, the Chinese character system entered a new historical period of symbolization of form, construction of shape and sound, and writing stroke. From the Wei and Jin dynasties to the sui and tang dynasties, the chinese character configuration and shape style entered a stable state, and the relationship between characters and words was more clear, while the occurrence of vulgar characters and variants was the main feature of this period. Since the Fall of the Song Dynasty, with the continuous development of printing, a new printing body - Song style has been produced, and the basic pattern of the Chinese character system has tended to be stable since then. During the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, the orthography structure of italic orthography was stable, there were obvious differences between official carvings and fang carvings and folk documents, and the dialectic words were often written differently because the characters were difficult to understand, and the vulgar miscellaneous characters were a prominent phenomenon of fang carvings and folk documents.

The general history of Chinese characters outside the territory is extremely rich, and for the first time, the spread of Chinese characters outside the territory and the use of ethnic minority areas are included in the scope of research. Through the collation and study of Foreign Chinese characters such as Japan, Korea-Korea, and Vietnam, the understanding of the general laws of the development and dissemination of Chinese characters has been deepened from a new perspective, and the extensive influence of Chinese character civilization has been demonstrated. The spread and use of Chinese characters in ethnic minority areas is not only the field of research on the history of the development of Chinese characters, but also an important topic in the study of the history of Chinese civilization. By combing through the spread of Chinese characters in ethnic minority areas in history and studying the influence of Chinese characters on the scripts in ethnic minority areas, it is helpful to the study of the history of the development of Chinese characters, the history of ethnic characters and the history of Chinese civilization.

The General History takes the original data and samples of Chinese characters in previous dynasties as an objective basis, not only attaches importance to the analysis of the description and analysis of the individual Chinese characters in different eras and their use, but also pays more attention to the comprehensive dynamic investigation of the development of the Chinese character system and related cultural backgrounds. In the process of research, the members of the research group strive to grasp the main problems in the development of Chinese characters in various historical periods according to the research results and theoretical methods such as dynamic analysis of the development of Chinese characters, genealogical construction, and identification of common characters accumulated in the past 30 years, carefully investigate various phenomena of the development of ancient and modern Chinese characters, objectively describe the historical trajectory of the formation and development of Chinese characters, and reveal the basic laws followed by the development and evolution of the Chinese character system.

The study of the history of the development of Chinese characters is an extremely difficult basic research topic, which is undoubtedly of great significance for inheriting and promoting Chinese character civilization and Excellent Traditional Chinese Culture, promoting the theoretical and applied research of Chinese characters, and promoting the construction of Chinese philology disciplines. As the first general historical work on the development of Chinese characters, the research group hopes that the "General History" can contribute to the in-depth research of the history of the development of Chinese characters.