Source: Guangming Daily
The early writing of the Chinese nation, including words and image symbols, is not only a simple record of the history of material civilization, but also an early cultural memory of mankind generated on this basis, an understanding of life, an observation of the universe, and the construction of the knowledge genealogy of Chinese culture.
Archaeological discoveries in the past hundred years have proved the long history of Chinese civilization with irrefutable facts. From the Paleolithic Yuanmou Ape Man Ruins, Shaanxi Lantian Man Ruins, Beijing Man Ruins, to the Neolithic Pei Ligang Site, Xinle Site, Yangshao Culture, Majiabang Culture, Hemudu Culture, Daxi Culture, Hongshan Culture, Sanxingdui Culture, Liangzhu Culture, Qujialing Culture, Majiajiao Culture, Longshan Culture, Qijia Culture, Tao Temple Ruins, etc., an independent chain of Chinese civilization development has been formed. Especially in these Neolithic sites, a large number of stone tools, jades, pottery have been excavated, and early houses, squares, palaces, city walls, and large tombs have been found, which proves that the material civilization of the Chinese nation in that period can reach a height, and a more credible ancient history of Chinese material civilization is about to come out.
Through the discovery of material archaeology, we also understand the early spiritual civilization of mankind. For example, according to the discovery of early rock paintings, we know that humans have long mastered the ability to paint; according to the shellfish ornaments next to the skeleton of the people in the cave on the top of the mountain, we know that people at that time already had aesthetic awareness; according to the discovery of early human ruins and ceremonial artifacts such as jade, we know that there were already related religious activities at that time; we can also speculate on when China entered a class society and when tribal leaders may have been born through the different residences of early human beings found in archaeology, the size of tombs and the number of funerary items. Speculate on the social status of the tomb owner during his lifetime. Along with the excavation of these archaeological relics, the spiritual civilization deposited on them also makes us think about it. Such as yangshao culture of colored pottery, Hongshan culture of jade dragon, Liangzhu culture of jade, Sanxingdui culture mask, their production, all contain the cultural ideas of people at that time. This shows that the history of the development of the spiritual civilization of the Chinese nation is equally long as the history of the development of material civilization.
However, in the face of those cold cultural relics that cannot speak, although we can gallop our imagination, it is difficult to glimpse the rich inner world of the ancestors and understand what they know and think. Therefore, we are not satisfied with understanding the lives of the ancient people, but also want to understand their hearts. Human beings need not only material archaeology, but also spiritual archaeology. And these exist precisely in the early human writing (including words and image symbols). They are the historical relics of the spiritual growth of the Chinese nation and the most valuable materials for our spiritual archaeology. Archaeology of the human spirit according to them is no less significant than physical archaeology.
Of course, in order to carry out the archaeology of the human spirit, it is necessary to take the material archaeology as the premise. Fortunately, the current rich material archaeological achievements are providing strong support for the spiritual archaeology of the Chinese nation. In the past hundred years, the archaeological community has basically clarified a series of archaeological excavations from the Old Neolithic Age to the Xia and Shang Dynasties, basically clarified the development process of Chinese civilization from primitive villages to cities, from tribes to countries, from the use of stone tools to the casting of iron tools, from primitive gray pottery to exquisite bronzes, from early carved symbols to the maturity of writing, from the common ownership of property to the emergence of classes, from primitive beliefs to large-scale religious activities. A careful comparison will show that this chain of Chinese civilization history constructed by archaeology is basically consistent with the historical process from the Five Emperors to the Xia and Shang Dynasties outlined in early Chinese writings. For example, the Erlitou culture roughly corresponds to the Xia culture and the early Shang culture, and the Tao Temple site is related to the legendary "Yaodu", which can be basically proved from the perspective of archaeological sites, excavated cultural relics or from the perspective of dating. The names of the first princes and kings of the Yin Shang era recorded in the "Records of History" are basically the same as the records of the oracle bones, which is a well-known fact. It can be said that it is the current physical archaeology that makes us re-realize the great value of early writing. Therefore, referring to the rich achievements of contemporary archaeology, it will surely push the research of early Chinese civilization to a new height and realize the deepening from material archaeology to spiritual archaeology. And all this is inseparable from the study of the early writing of Chinese civilization.
We know that the Chinese civilization is the only civilization in the world that has not been interrupted. So, an important reason for this is that we have a long tradition of writing. Chinese invented writing very early on, set up historians, and consciously recorded the early spiritual civilization of China. Judging from archaeological excavations, as early as the 1960s, more than 100 pottery carving symbols were found in the Yangshao Cultural Site in Banpo, Xi'an, dating back to about 7,000 to 5,000 years ago. Since then, painted symbols from the Ruins of Ledu Liuwan in Qinghai, pottery carved symbols excavated from Yangjiawan in Hubei Province, carved symbols excavated from the Shuangdun Site in Bengbu, Anhui, Pottery of Dawenkou Culture, and inscribed texts from the Liangzhu and Longshan eras have been gradually discovered, and some can even be interpreted into sentences. In particular, the inscriptions on the tortoise shell excavated from 1984 to 1987 at the Pei Ligangjia Lake site in Wuyang, Henan Province, can be as early as 7500 to 8500 years ago. This shows that long before the YinShang Oracle, China already had a relatively mature script. Although we have not yet found the relics of the previous systematic writing of Yin Shang, there is no shortage of relevant records in the pre-Qin classics. "Zuo Chuan and Summoning the Twelve Years": "Zuo Shi leaned on each other, and Wang Yue said: 'It is a good history!'" The Son is kind to him. It is to be able to read "Three Graves", "Five Classics", "Eight Suo", and "Nine Hills". Kong Yingda's "Justice" quotes Kong Anguo's "Shang Shu And Preface": "The book of Fu Yan, Shennong, and the Yellow Emperor is called the "Three Graves", and the Daodao is also yan. The books of Shao Hao, Zhao, Gao Xin, Tang, and Yu are called the Five Classics, and the words are often said. "The gossip is called the "Eight Sos", and it is also righteous. The Chronicle of Kyushu is called "Nine Hills". "Chu Zuo Shi leaned on xiang and could read the Three Tombs, the Five Classics, the Eight Suo, and the Nine Hills. That is, the testament of the emperor of the previous world also. "Zhou Li Chunguan Zongbo": Foreign History "Book of the Three Emperors and Five Emperors", Jia Kuiyun: "Three Tombs" and the Book of the Three Emperors. The Five Classics, the Regular Code of the Five Emperors. The Eight Sos, The Law of the Eight Kings. "Nine Hills", the ring of the fall of Kyushu. Zheng Xuan's "Zuo Zhuan" also believes that the "Three Tombs" and "Five Classics" are "the book of the three emperors and five emperors". Of course, these statements have the nature of speculation by later generations, but it is certain that by the Spring and Autumn Period, these documents still had a small amount of preservation, and they should have been written in ancient scripts before the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, so few people could read them. When we look at pre-Qin literature, people who know that era often "cite scriptures", such as citing the "Book of Xia" as many as 20 times in the "Zuo Zhuan", "Chinese", and "Mozi". These are enough to explain the early generation of Chinese writing. The Shang Shu Duoshi records the Zhou Gong's admonition to the remnants of yin merchants: "Only Er knows, only the ancestors of Yin, there are books and codes, and Yin Ge Xia's life." This shows that in the Yin Shang era, in addition to oracle bones for divination and inscriptions cast on bronzes, there were also a large number of canonical writings. These documents were well known to the remnants of the Yin merchants, so that the Duke of Zhou could use this fact to admonish them. It can be seen that the early writing of the Chinese nation has a long history.
How did humans invent writing (including writing and early pictorial symbols)? It is to record the history, experience and wisdom of mankind through an effective means with material civilization as the carrier, so as to review the past and guide the future. As the most important achievement of early Chinese writing, those who have the honor of passing down are the "Poems", "Books", "Rituals", "Music", "Yi", "Spring and Autumn", and "Six Classics". A closer analysis reveals that the main purpose of early Chinese writing was not to record history. In the "Six Classics", only the "Spring and Autumn" is simply recorded, and it was the latest to be produced. In fact, even in "Spring and Autumn", the historical events recorded are extremely simple, and more importantly, Confucius's evaluation of these events is recorded through historical events. The rest of the "Five Classics" record the poems, music, and dances of the ancestors, the experience of governing the country, the norms of daily life and the state system, and the thinking and wisdom of life in the universe, and so on. To put it simply, although the early writing of the Chinese nation is based on the history of material civilization, it is not a simple record of this historical process, but an early cultural memory of mankind generated on this basis, an understanding of life, an observation of the universe, a process of human spiritual growth, and the construction of the knowledge genealogy of Chinese culture.
The reason why we put forward the concept of "early writing" is to better carry out spiritual archaeology, and to explore how the early spiritual civilization of the Chinese nation was formed and how the knowledge genealogy was established in a way that traced back to the roots. "Writing" is a time-honored concept with enormous room for interpretation. It is composed of two synonyms of "book" and "writing", the original meaning of which refers to the act of writing, and then extends to the content of writing, the feelings expressed, and the thoughts of sustenance. Today, we regard "writing" as a human subject activity for the purpose of spiritual production, and comprehensively study it, including the purpose of "writing", the way of writing, the value of writing, the content of writing, and other aspects, and finally implement it into the construction of human spiritual civilization. From this, it is possible for us to make full use of the rich achievements of contemporary archaeology and excavated documents to find out the relationship between the material civilization and spiritual civilization in the early days of the Chinese nation, why the "classics" of early China came into being, why the ancient history of the Chinese nation was established, and why the cultural spirit of the Chinese nation was formed.
The archaeological achievements in the past hundred years have described for us a relatively credible clue to the development of Chinese material civilization, and have also laid a solid foundation for us to explore the history of the spiritual civilization of the Chinese nation, and spiritual archaeology and early Chinese writing should become an important direction for China's academic development in the new century. The study of writing is different from the single-discipline study of literature, history and philosophy, and it is also different from the traditional study of scripture or historiography, and it is even more different from the so-called "text" research that is more popular at present, which is studied as a unique spiritual activity of human beings. It should start from the basic point of why human beings should write, make a new interpretation of the existing knowledge genealogy, explore the Chinese nation's thoughts, feelings, values, codes of conduct, historical consciousness, tianren philosophy and all the fundamental issues related to the occurrence of Chinese culture, and build a history of Chinese spiritual civilization that echoes the history of social civilization. It is a new interdisciplinary humanities discipline with broad prospects for development.
(Author: Zhao Minli, Professor, Capital Normal University)