The development of Chinese calligraphy is often closely related to the excavated calligraphy works, and the excavation of some important calligraphy cultural relics means that the history of Chinese calligraphy will be rewritten to some extent.
For example, the discovery of the "oracle bone" in the Qing Dynasty has made the history of Chinese calligraphy go forward for more than 1,000 years, and a large number of inscriptions in the Qing Dynasty have been unearthed, which has led to the rise of "epigraphy".
In today's French National Library, a small copy of the Diamond Sutra copied by Empress Wu Zetian of the Tang Dynasty came out, this work is quite gorgeous, full of nobility, this work shows the style of "empress", is a real model of "words like people".
As soon as this work came out, it aroused strong concern in the calligraphy community, and many people wrote many critical articles specifically about this work, and believed that this work was enough to change the history of calligraphy.
This work is Wu Zetian's Xiaokai "Diamond Sutra".
Let's first talk about the origin of this work, Chinese calligraphy in the Southern and Northern Dynasties period, there were some "copyists", they made a great contribution to the sinification of Buddhism, the purpose of "copying" is to provide the world with scriptures to read, before the Song Dynasty printing technology is not a scale, so the basic reading of books is all by hand to complete.
In the Sui Dynasty, the profession of "copying the scriptures" was basically a monopoly of the scholar-doctor class, because only these people had the basic skills of calligraphy, so the copyists of the Sui Dynasty were basically masters, and the Zhiyong Zen master we know as well was a famous master of copying the scriptures.
In the Tang Dynasty, some high-level intellectuals at the grass-roots level of scholars and doctors still retained the habit of "copying the scriptures", and at the same time, some grass-roots literati "copied the scriptures", and among some "copying works" unearthed in Dunhuang, it is not difficult for us to see some low-level copying works.
The volume of the Diamond Sutra copied by Wu Zetian was unearthed in Cave No. 17, and we know that in the Seventeenth Cave of Mogao Cave, the most precious Buddhist sword scriptures, embroidery, magic tools and other objects of the Tang Dynasty were unearthed, all of which are national top cultural relics, and at the same time, wu Zetian's hand-copied "Diamond Sutra" was unearthed.
According to the French sinologist Bo Xihe, who entered the Mogao Caves that year, this volume of scriptures is wrapped in a gold silk scroll of rosewood depiction gold poster box, because the whole volume is written in gold powder, even after 700 years, it has not faded at all.
More than 100 years have passed since the Dunhuang Tibetan Scripture Cave was opened and everyone's cultural relics have flowed out, and from all the copied scriptures found in the Tibetan Scripture Cave, we have found that only this volume of the Diamond Sutra copied by Wu Zetian is a complete version, and the others are fragments, and the volume copied by Wu Zetian has the word "敕", which is also not available in the other scriptures, and there is also the words "Chenyu Chang fengzhi proofreading" on it, which can be seen that this work must also be copied by Wu Zetian.
The reason why Wu Zetian copied this passage is recorded in the Book of Tang dynasty to commemorate his deceased parents, and was eventually enshrined in Dunhuang, which was closed in the Dunhuang Scripture Cave during the Later Northern Song Dynasty, and was not stolen to France by Bo Xihe until 1900.
For calligraphy enthusiasts, this Diamond Sutra is not only an extremely precious cultural relic, but also a rare artifact of learning xiaokai.