According to legend, after "knotted rope", "bagua", "picture", etc., the Yellow Emperor Shiguan Cangjie created writing, which opened the era of Chinese writing and pushed Chinese civilization to a new stage. Records such as the Han Dynasty's "Huainanzi" show that after Cangjie made the characters, "the sky rains and millet, and the ghosts cry at night", showing that Chinese have great reverence for culture, believing that with writing and culture, talents are more capable and can get the favor of heaven, which is very different from the western worship of gods.
However, modern scholars generally believe that the systematic writing tool cannot be completely created by one person, and Cangjie, if it does have its own person, is only one of the creators of the text, or the text arranger or promulgater.
So, who created the Chinese script? If there are many writers, then what position should Cangjie have in it, and should it be put on the altar?
Regarding the origin of Chinese characters, the historical records are not discussed for the time being, first look at the archaeological findings.
Between 5,000 and more than 8,000 years ago, archaeology has found many ancient inscriptions, such as the Inscription of Wuyang Jia Lake in Henan Province inscribed on the turtle shell, the more than 630 Double Pier Inscriptions of Bengbu in Anhui Province, the Banpo Inscription of Xi'an in Shaanxi Province inscribed on the edge of the Tao Bowl Mouth, the Qingdun Inscription of Nantong in Jiangsu Province (the initial symbol of the study belongs to the origin of Yi Gua) on the fossil of elk antlers, and so on. For these inscriptions, there is great controversy in the academic community, some believe that it is the original script, some think that it is the original inscription, and there is no generally accepted conclusion so far. Scholars such as Yu Shengwu believe that banpo inscriptions dating back more than 6,000 years "are some simple characters produced in the origin stage of writing".
More than 5,000 years ago, the tomb inscription of Zhuangqiao in Zhejiang province is very special, and six symbols arranged in sequence were found on a broken stone cymbal, and the strokes of each symbol did not exceed 5 strokes. Xu Xinmin, a researcher at the Zhejiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, pointed out, "The most important thing is that the 6 symbols that are connected together, 3 of which are the same, which is obviously a sentence that expresses a certain meaning." Li Boqian, chief expert of the national Xia-Shang-Zhou Dynasty Project, believes that these original characters do not appear in isolation like other single carved symbols, but can be grouped into ligatures. It has been possible to "hyphenate into sentences", doesn't it mean that there are already systematic words? Unfortunately, there are no further archaeological finds.
After 4600 years, there are more and more archaeological discoveries with more literal glyphs, and bone inscriptions and Tao Temple Zhu wen that are more than 1,000 years earlier than the oracle bones have appeared successively. In short, from the archaeological point of view, after 4600 years ago, China basically entered the era of writing, and the oracle bone period officially entered a mature stage; from the perspective of the development logic of the script, the oracle bone is a mature script, and there must be a "first mature script" before this, and the development from "early mature script" to "mature script" also takes about 1000 years of evolution.
Through the history of the origin of Chinese characters, it can be seen that around 4600 years ago, the ancestors have used writing on a large scale, but from the inscription to the text, is it the result of Cangjie's creation of characters?
Coincidentally, about 4700 years ago, the Yellow Emperor tribe began to rise, successively competing with the Yan Emperor and Xuan You, and finally achieving hegemony. According to the literature, Cangjie was one of the yellow emperor's historians, and the yellow emperor ordered Cangjie to make characters, which occurred around 4700 years ago. Obviously, judging from the coincidence of the time point, the legend of Cangjie's character creation should not be fiction, but have a certain basis.
There are three problems: first, Cangjie alone can not create a large number of characters, even if Cangjie is a team can not do; second, in addition to Cangjie characters, there are also legends such as female characters; third, the ancient script is distributed in many places, and many words are not common, such as the two Zhu scripts found at the site of the Tao Temple in Shanxi, and the inscriptions on the bone inscriptions and oracle bones have no evolutionary relationship, or at least the obvious evolutionary relationship has not been found today. Undoubtedly, as modern scholars have analyzed, "If Cangjie really has its own person, it is only one of the creators of the text, or the person who organizes the text or promulgates it."
Obviously, about 5,000 years ago, after the material and spiritual development of ancient society reached a certain stage, many civilizations scattered on the land of China found that the inscriptions could not meet the needs of realistic expression, so there was a demand for words, and then from the inscriptions to the text, Cangjie should be one of the makers of the characters.
From the inscription to the writing stage, the civilization of the land of Shenzhou has successively created words, or independently created words, or inspired by the tribe that invented the script, and the process is difficult to restore now, but why is only Cangjie pushed to the altar, and only the history books record that Cangjie made the word "shocking the world and weeping ghosts"?
The earliest record of Cangjie is the Warring States Xunzi, who unveiled the secret in the article "Xunzi Unmasking", "The good writers are many, and Cangjie is alone, one also." "That is to say, there were many people who studied the creation of characters at the beginning, and many versions were circulated in the world, but among them, the Cangjie version of the text was the most excellent and systematic........ Gradually gained the recognition of the world, so other versions were slowly eliminated, leaving only the Cangjie version of the text.
After Xunzi, the saying that "Cangjie made writing, and then the book deed began to be written, then its beginning" gradually pushed Cangjie to the altar, believing that he was the ancestor of Chinese characters and the source of character creation. In fact, whether from an archaeological point of view or from the logic of word creation, Cangjie is not the first person to create words, nor can it be a person who creates words on a large scale, and the reason why the honor of creating words is given to Cangjie may be just as Xunzi said, "And Cangjie is passed on alone, one also".
It can be imagined that the truth of Cangjie's creation of characters is not to create many words, but to: put forward a more reasonable and systematic thinking and method of creating words, which will be passed on by future generations; Cangjie sorted out the words created by predecessors and officially promulgated them.
Therefore, from the inscription to the text, in a sense, Cangjie is the leader of this literary revolution, and should be put on the altar of god.