Maybe it's because I often work with words, or maybe it's because I always like to trace the roots of everything, but I've always had an interest in the origin of Chinese characters. This is actually a big philological proposition, and I really don't know where to "trace" for a while.
Generally speaking, there are three major signs of the birth of civilization, and the invention of writing is recognized as one of the important signs. Because words can break down all barriers, become a bridge for us to communicate and intersect and a habitat for our souls. As long as two people who do not speak the same language have a common script, it is no longer difficult to communicate. As one of the oldest scripts in the world, Chinese characters carry thousands of years of cultural inheritance and historical accumulation. However, the question of the origin of Chinese characters has been highly debated. The legend of "Cangjie Character Making" has been considered a milestone event in the evolution of Chinese writing since ancient times. It is recorded in classic documents such as "Shuowen Jie Zi Xu", "Xunzi" and "Lü's Spring and Autumn". So far, it has been affirmed by the philology community that Cangjie is at least the compiler of the invention of Chinese characters, the master of the collection, and the one who has made great contributions to the development and inheritance of Chinese characters.
The legend of "Cangjie Character Making" has always accompanied the evolution of Chinese characters. According to legend, Cangjie was the left historian of the Yellow Emperor period, and was respected as the "sage of word making" and "the ancestor of humanity", also known as the "word sage". However, Xu Shenyin, a philologist in the Eastern Han Dynasty, discovered the code of Chinese characters and compiled the seal script dictionary "Shuowen Jie Zi", which enabled the legend of Cangjie to be passed down to the world, and also made outstanding contributions to the study of Chinese characters, and was also respected by later generations as the "character saint". Cangjie and Xu Shen are called "word saints", the difference is that Cangjie is the saint of word making, and Xu Shen is the saint of word interpretation. Obviously, there was Cangjie to create words first, and then there was Xu Shen to interpret the words, the first saint of the "word saint" is none other than Cangjie, and Xu Shen can only be regarded as a "sub-saint".
"Cangjie makes characters" is the indisputable mainstream historical consensus at present. In 2014, "The Legend of Cangjie" was successfully selected into the fourth batch of national intangible cultural heritage list. According to the record of "Huainanzi", on the day of the success of Cangjie's character creation, the whole country rejoiced, alarmed the heavens, and the millet fell like rain, which frightened the ghosts and ghosts to cry at night, which is the origin of the "Gu Yu" solar term. It shows what a great feat Cangjie is to create characters, which can be described as "earth-shattering ghosts and gods". It also shows that the rain of Gu Yu is God's reward for Cangjie's character creation.
In the traditional culture of the mainland, "sage" refers to a person who is complete in knowledge and deeds, and a person who is "a saint with all his talents and virtues", which is an infinite existence in a limited world. Cangjie is revered as the "word saint", which shows the grandeur and prosperity of Cangjie's historical status. Jao Tsung-i, a master of Chinese culture, said: "It is the Chinese characters that make the core of Chinese culture and become the banner of the Chinese spirit." "Cangjie created words, undoubtedly opened a precedent for Chinese culture, and was the first lamplighter of Chinese civilization of 5,000 years.
There is a habit in Chinese culture that once you are revered as a "saint", you will mythologize a "saint", and Cangjie is no exception. In the Han Dynasty, Cangjie began to be mythologized. Since then, the legend of Cangjie has been legendary in various versions, but the fact that it has survived to this day is enough to show the respect that human beings have for writing and the importance of Chinese characters to us.
Cangjie, formerly surnamed Hou Gang, named Jie, known as Shi Huang, is now a native of Shiguan Village, Shiguan Town, Baishui County, Shaanxi Province (a person from Nanle, Henan). Baishui County, Shaanxi Province is the hometown of Cangjie recognized by the State Council. In ancient Chinese legends, Cangjie invented Chinese characters when he was the historian of the Yellow Emperor, and because of his great achievements in creating words, the Yellow Emperor gave him the surname "Cang", which means that Cangjie is a monarch in the world, a king. It is said that when Confucius, the "Sage of Literature", traveled around the world, he passed by the Shiguan Yuan, and knelt down in front of the tomb of Cangjie, and was very grateful. This is the pious attitude of the "Wensheng" to the "word sage". I think that after the Yellow Emperor unified China, he felt that the method of knotting ropes and stringing shells to remember things was far from meeting the requirements, so he ordered the historian Cangjie to find a way to make words. Legend has it that Cangjie was a strange person, born with four eyes, each eye has two pupils, which can be described as "four eyes and heavy pupils". After Cangjie created words, people knew that God had sent him to do the big thing of "making words", which required him to see more and farther. Of course, this is the myth of Cangjie, but the image of the "four-eyed god" reflects people's worship of Cangjie.
It is said that after Cangjie received the order, he began to concentrate on making words. However, he pondered for a long time, but he could not make up the words. Coincidentally, one day when Cangjie was thinking, a phoenix flew from the sky, and a thing in his mouth fell down, just in front of Cangjie, Cangjie hurriedly picked it up, and saw that there was a hoof print on it, but he couldn't identify which beast's hoof print. At this time, a hunter passed by, and after looking at it, the hunter said that this was the hoof print of Pixiu. After hearing this, Cangjie was very inspired, and he thought, everything has its own characteristics, if you can grasp the characteristics and draw images, everyone can recognize them, isn't this just words? From then on, Cangjie carefully observed the characteristics of various things, such as the sun, moon and stars, rivers, lakes and seas, birds and animals, and applied utensils, and so on, and drew graphics according to their characteristics, and finally created the earliest 28 kinds of bird trace books. Over time, Cangjie has created more words. Cangjie dedicated these words to the Yellow Emperor, the Yellow Emperor was very happy, and immediately convened a meeting of the leaders of Kyushu, at which the Yellow Emperor asked Cangjie to teach the chiefs these words, so these pictographs began to be applied, that is, the most primitive oracle bone inscription, the fleeting language can be "passed on to a different place, for a while", the obscurantist era of knotted ropes and string shells is over, and a new era of Chinese civilization has begun. Of course, the legend of these "demigods and half people" is not groundless, and archaeology believes that China's earliest writing has existed since the period of the Yellow Emperor in ancient times, and Cangjie and his people are not "found without such a person"! As for the story of the ancestor of Chinese civilization and the "emperor among men" Fu Xi's painting gossip and teaching fishing and hunting, I believe most people know it, but there is also a saying that "Fu Xi made words", which is even more of a legendary "legend"; Fu Xi was two or three thousand years earlier than Cangjie, and Fu Xi created gossip from concrete to abstract, and Cangjie made words from a phase to a similar phase. Therefore, it can also be said that Cangjie inherited the mantle of Fuxi, and since Cangjie, Chinese characters have been formally formed, and one of the three oldest "hieroglyphs" in the world was born.
Since ancient times, China has a tradition of honoring and commemorating saints, and the best way to commemorate them is to build temples and statues. There are more than 40 known Cangjie temples in the country, but the Cangjie Temple in Baishui, Shaanxi Province is the most famous. One weekend in the summer of 2023, a group of literary friends and I made a special trip to the "longing for it" - Baishui Cangjie Temple.
Baishui Cangjie Temple is located in the northeast of the county, at the southern foot of Huanglong Mountain, the left bank of the Luohe River in Shiguan Town, as soon as you hear this name, it is related to Cangjie, has always been a magical existence. The temple is surrounded by thick walls and high walls, the temple building is huge, with blue bricks and gray tiles, and the layout is like. Standing in front of the tall and majestic mountain gate, after our group bowed respectfully, I suggested asking a professional guide to lead us around. The tour guide quickly got in touch, and the elegant female tour guide talked eloquently: "Cangjie Temple was called Cangjie Temple before the Song Dynasty, and it was called Cangjie Temple after the Ming Dynasty." In order to commemorate Cangjie's outstanding contributions, the people of Baishui in Cangjie's hometown have long worshiped this ancestor in many ways. According to historical records, Emperor Heng of the Eastern Han Dynasty extended his reign for five years, and the Baishui Cangjie Temple had become a scale. After thousands of years of vicissitudes, Baishui Cangjie Temple has become the only national key cultural relics protection unit in the country that integrates temples, tombs, cypresses, books and tablets. The ancient cypress group of Cangjie Temple and the ancient cypress group of Confucius Temple in Qufu, Shandong, and the ancient cypress group of the Yellow Emperor's Mausoleum in Qiaoshan are called the three major ancient temples and ancient cypress groups in the country. The remnants of the monument are great, and the mountains and rivers are fragrant. In the sacrificial and historical accumulation of the past dynasties, Cangjie Temple has a profound Cangjie culture with temple buildings, ancient cypress murals, couplet plaques, myths and legends, as well as extremely precious "Cangsheng Bird Trace Book Tablet" and "Guangwu General Tablet". Standing in front of the front hall, the tour guide continued: "The existing main buildings in the temple are the wall, the mountain gate, the stage theater building, the front hall, the newspaper hall, the dedication hall, the dormitory, the bell and drum tower and the east and west wings, etc., which are mainly renovated in the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. "We stopped for a long time in front of the Cangjie tomb behind the dormitory, only to see that the cemetery has a circumference of more than 50 meters, a height of five meters, an octagonal brick wall outside, and two doors in the east and west. The top of the tomb grows an ancient cypress, the branches come out in all directions, and it takes turns to prosper and wither every year, commonly known as "turning the branch cypress". The distance between the thousands of years and the word saint has suddenly narrowed.
What impressed me the most was the ancient cypress group in the Cangjie Temple. The crown of the ancient cypress is like a cloud, the age of the tree is more than 1,000 years, more than 4,000 ancient cypress trees of the millennium will decorate the "temple" with the four seasons like spring, among them, the oldest "Cangjie hand planted cypress" tree is more than 5,000 years old, and the "Xuanyuan hand planted cypress" of the Yellow Emperor's Mausoleum is comparable. The building of Cangjie Temple is a long-axis painting of traditional Chinese ancient architecture, and it is a window to peek into the ancient Yellow River culture and ancient Chinese civilization.
After visiting Cangjie Temple, my thoughts have been rising and falling around the four words "Character Shengcangjie". Mr. Qi Gong, a master of Chinese culture, said that Cangjie is the "ancestor of Chinese literature", the inscription of the famous writer Jia Pingwa to the Cangjie Temple is "worship my ancestor", and the scholar Wen Youyan commented that Cangjie is "Cangjie culture, glorious for thousands of years." Cangjie is not only Chinese, but all of humanity. Yes, with writing, human experience and wisdom can be recorded and transmitted, and "thousand-year-old words can speak" is exactly this truth. Since then, the wisdom of the people has been opened, and agriculture has been flourishing, which is the exquisite interpretation of "Cangjie making words, rain in the sky, and ghosts crying at night" recorded in "Huainanzi". Words can not only record good deeds and great deeds, the so-called "creation cannot hide its secrets", such as "Tianyu Su", which is the inheritance of good to civilization; words can also record evil deeds and bad deeds, just as "spirits and monsters cannot hide their deeds" and "ghosts cry at night", that is the fear of evil to civilization. The creation of writing has changed the history of human civilization, and it is a major event that shocks the world and weeps ghosts and gods. The sacredness of writing and the fashion of respecting books and cherishing words have also infiltrated into folk customs. For example, pillow books to ward off evil spirits, writing to cure diseases, waste books into urns and other practices are very popular among the people in the Baishui area, aside from the superstitious elements, does it also reflect a cultural force?
"The wind blows a leaf, and everything is in autumn. "Cangjie is a prehistoric figure somewhere between myth and legend, and in every sense of the word, he is a sacred person of antiquity, a great god of culture. To find the character Shengcangjie is to find the soul of the magical and just Chinese characters that have nourished the Chinese "context" for generations—both beautiful and ugly.
November 6, 2023
Yang Zhouping, a native of Fengxiang, Shaanxi, is a senior judge. Director of the Chinese Judges Federation of Literary and Art Circles, member of the Chinese Prose Literature Association, Shaanxi Writers Association, and Provincial Chinese Society, director of the Baoji Writers Association, executive vice chairman of the Fengxiang District Writers Association, winner of dozens of literary awards above the city level, winner of the first China Silk Road Prose Award, the third "Six-Dimensional" Baoji Writers Association Prose Collection Award, and columnist of several platforms such as "Today's Headlines". He has published a collection of essays, "Love and Moon", "A City of Smoke and Rain" and so on. Many of his works have been selected as provincial middle school language tutoring textbooks and have become interpretation articles for Chinese test questions in many provinces and cities. His works have been published or reprinted by print and online media such as "People's Digest", "Overseas Digest", "People's Justice Tianping Monthly", "Chinese Women", "People's Daily", "People's Political Consultative Conference", "Legal Daily", "China Discipline Inspection and Supervision Daily", "People's Court Daily", "Shaanxi Daily", "Miscellaneous Newspaper", "Baoji Daily", "Selected Essays", "Yanhe", "Meiwen", "Qinling Literature", "Learning to Strengthen the Country, Learning Platform", "Phoenix.com", "Tencent.com", "Chinese Writers' Network" and other print and online media, totaling more than 150,000 words.