"Chinese character culture is the core culture and basic culture of Chinese culture. Ancient Chinese characters are the source of Chinese characters, among which the oracle bone and gold script are the memories of the new era of Chinese civilization, the carrier of ancient Chinese documents, the fossils of ancient culture, and the precious heritage left by my Chinese ancestors to future generations and the people of the world. ”
Great beauty of Chinese characters, beauty in the body, beauty in the structure, more beauty in culture, beauty in wisdom. Recently, Mr. Xu Chao, professor and doctoral supervisor of Shandong University and director of the Research Center for Calligraphy Art of Shandong University, published his new book "Damei Chinese Characters" published by Guangxi Normal University Press. Based on serious and rigorous scholarship, with unique ideas and warm writing, the book is composed of "Introduction to Ancient Chinese Characters" and "100 Ancient Chinese Characters", and accompanied by a hundred golden single-character calligraphy created by Mr. Xu Chao himself, which makes people perfectly appreciate the infinite charm of Damei Chinese characters.
Back to the beginning of the creation of words
Jao Zongyi once said: "The core of Chinese culture is Chinese characters, and it has become the banner of China's spiritual civilization." "The significance of Chinese characters to the Chinese nation and Chinese civilization can be seen here. The knowledge of ancient Chinese characters is too advanced, and there are too few people to study. The development of Chinese characters for thousands of years, China is so vast, the use of characters in different periods and regions is extremely complicated, "while using, while creating, while eliminating", how difficult it is to explain the situation clearly.
Mr. Xu Chao then decided to use a special way of writing to write this "Damei Chinese Characters", the upper part of the "Introduction to Ancient Chinese Characters", in-depth and simple introduction of ancient character knowledge and the basic rules of understanding ancient characters, guide readers to start from the understanding of a glyph, through the snowball method, gradually understand 10, 20, and even more. The next part is "100 Ancient Chinese Characters", that is, the dissection of 100 "sparrows".
Photo: Liu Mengdong
The so-called "knowing a word" is, of course, not just knowing the pronunciation and basic meaning of the word, but "imagining why our ancestors created words at the beginning of the creation of words, and how they created words." In Mr. Xu Chao's view, this requires a serious and rigorous scholarship as the foundation for reasonable speculation, "For example, according to the 'reasonable speculation', the ancient people made the word 'human', of course, they will also pay attention to the ears, noses, mouths and limbs that make up people." Because the basic glyphs that represent these meanings were later used as a component of the configuration, it will be of particular significance to recognize these basic glyphs for the continuous expansion of the scope of literacy in the future. A word of primordiality will snowball into more and more words. This "snowball literacy method" can not only make people understand the original origin of a word, but also know some laws of the development of ancient Chinese characters.
For example, the character "An", Mr. Xu Chao listed in the book the four glyphs of the "An" character in the oracle bone, the seven glyphs in the Golden Text, and the small seal glyph, and combined with the glyph analysis: "(An) The original glyph is like a woman sitting on her knees, and there is a short diagonal line under the woman's hip, indicating that the woman's hip is sitting on the heel, so as to reflect the meaning of peace and tranquility." As for whether this slash refers to the event symbol or the cushion, it is difficult to determine. Later, on top of this glyph, '宀', '宀' in ancient Chinese characters is the hieroglyph of the longitudinal section of the house, and the addition of '宀' above the original glyph means that the woman is sitting in the room. The late Warring States Jin wen is again in the original character
Adding 'heart' to the bottom of the form as an intention to emphasize the peace of mind deepens the meaning. Interestingly, that additional short line continued until the era of the small seal was omitted, which shows that the inheritance of Chinese characters is very strong, and also shows that the small seal does have the credit of deleting complexity and simplifying, reflecting the correct direction of the development of Chinese characters. 'An' sometimes means tranquility and greeting in inscriptions. ”
Beauty, temperature, and creation
Mr. Feng Youlan's reading method is twelve words: fine selection, interpretation of words, knowledge of their meaning, and understanding of their reasoning. Mr. Shen Congwen's research on ancient cultural relics is regarded as "lyrical archaeology". He studied things, but "what he saw was man, man's cleverness, man's creation, man's artistic love of beauty and perseverance in labor" Mr. Xu Chao said that his writing follows the thinking of these two academic predecessors, trying to turn the esoteric into easy, complex into concise, and on this basis, "strive to guide readers to follow the process of ancient artificial characters through the knowledge in the book, feel the diligence, wisdom and creativity of the ancestors, and then become interested in traditional culture, stimulate their own innovative thinking and creative spirit."
The wisdom of beauty and the spirit of innovation are often outside of knowledge, so Mr. Xu Chao also hopes that readers will have a spirit of doubt in the process of reading this book, "Someone has drawn the unknown world as a black ball, and the known part is just a thin white line across it." Whoever can break through this thin line will have the opportunity to touch the unknown world. This is certainly difficult to break through, but it also means that everyone has the opportunity to discover and break through. Some people say that the interpretation of ancient Chinese characters mainly relies on guessing, but in fact, it really depends on learning, and learning is a bottomless pit, so this book encourages learning, research, questioning, exploration, and encourages the promotion of this spirit to all fields of knowledge. Sometimes the process of learning and research may be more important than gaining concrete knowledge and conclusions from it. ”
It is particularly worth mentioning that as a famous calligrapher, the 100 interpreted characters included in the next edition of "Damei Chinese Characters" are accompanied by mr. Xu Chao's single-character calligraphy created in the style of jinwen or jinwen. In order to be beautiful and reflect the integrity of the "work", the lower left corner of each single-character calligraphy is also stamped to represent the bookmaker's payment, and the printed texts are Jingzhai ( Jingzhai , Sanlaitang , and Samadhi Shoya , all of which are the author's numbers. "Samadhi" refers to heaven, earth, and people, and is used as a hall name to take the meaning of nature; "Samadhi" is another translation of the Sanskrit word "Samadhi", which is used as the name of the book house to take the meaning of reading books and doing learning to be worried and contemplative, which is similar to the meaning of "Jingzhai".
The calligraphy created specifically for these 100 characters is also because Mr. Xu Chao feels that for ordinary readers, it is difficult to see the beginning and end of a word from the ancient inscription rubbings, "Writing it out, you can let the reader see at a glance, so as to deeply understand the origin of a word dot painting." Between the dot paintings, there are often Chinese character genes flowing, and writing them out makes it easier for readers to understand this gene and clearly glimpse the evolution of Chinese characters. A kind of temperature is the warmth that surges in the author's heart when he faces the ancient Chinese characters, and it is also a deep friendship he has in front of the reader.
"Words are written"
In Mr. Xu Chao's view, the beauty of calligraphy is of course not only visual, formal and artistic, but also condenses the profound traditional culture. To his delight, "Da Mei Chinese Characters" is his own view of ancient characters from the perspective of traditional linguistics and philology, which has forged his own unique academic ideas.
From the perspective of traditional linguistics and philology, the idea of ancient characters is not unrelated to Mr. Xu Chao's academic career. As early as when he was an undergraduate at Beijing Normal University, Xu Chao encountered his favorite Zhang (Taiyan) Huang (Ji Gang) theory and became interested in paleography. The Zhanghuang doctrine pays special attention to finding the root cause and the evolution process of ancient scripts from source to flow. After being admitted to Shandong University, the tutors were Mr. Yin Menglun and Mr. Yin Huanxian, so Xu Chao was able to learn from the strengths of all, nourish calligraphy and calligraphy culture with the root of the study of the phonology and rhyme of words, and devote himself to scholarship for many years, so he had a pure source and a unique academic attitude.
Listening to Mr. Qi Gong's lecture at Beijing Normal University, Mr. Qi Gong said a sentence that impressed Xu Chao, "Mr. Qi Gong said, the words are written", "This looks like a nonsense." But in fact, it is a very important conclusion: the font change of Chinese characters is written exactly. Words are one and the same. Writing or calligraphy is used. Therefore, since 1996, I have taken a master's degree with Mr. Jiang Weisong at Shandong University, and a doctorate with Mr. Jiang, all of which are in the direction of combining philology and calligraphy. Mr. Jiang insisted on setting calligraphy in the department of Chinese, unlike some colleges and universities in the department of art. Although calligraphy is an art, the root, foundation and soul of the art of writing Chinese characters is Chinese character culture, and writing is only a skill or art form, so calligraphy must master the evolution of words and must be based on scholarship. Mr. Jiang's emphasis on the Chinese character culture behind calligraphy and the emphasis on academic thinking are in the same vein as Mr. Qi Gong, and I have the privilege of listening to the teachings of the two gentlemen and benefiting a lot. ”
It is precisely because of the academic foundation that Xu Chao will study ancient characters in combination with the meaning of phonology and exegesis, will comprehensively examine ancient Chinese characters from the perspective of traditional linguistics and philology, and will be immersed in the collection, collation and research of ancient Chinese characters for many years.
Speaking of which, this "Great American Chinese Characters" is a natural product of Mr. Xu Chao's academic thinking. Because of the collection of a number of inscription rubbings of early bronzes, "five years ago, I began to want to understand every word of this batch of inscriptions, to find out their 'origins', and to write an inscription for them," Xu Chao said, "at first, of course, it was a study of the glyph characteristics of the golden text, and soon I found that it must be traced back to the oracle bone." It was in the process that I came up with the idea of writing a popular reading of ancient Chinese characters. I want Sinology to exert its youthful vitality and let more people become interested in ancient Chinese characters. Driven by this idea, not only has "Damei Chinese Characters" been published, but the more academic "500 Cases of Ancient Chinese Characters" will be published by Zhonghua Bookstore, and another "Literature in Early Bronzes" is also about to be finalized. Most of the bronzes involved in the "Literature in Early Bronzes" belong to the Western Zhou Dynasty, and most of them are from the site of the Zhou Dynasty, that is, the Area of Fufeng and Qishan, Confucius said: "Zhou Jian in the second generation, depressed Wen Zhao, I from Zhou." Mr. Xu Chao said that in fact, not only Confucius, China has pursued "Congzhou" for thousands of years, all of which are "Congzhou culture", so it is a source culture in traditional Chinese culture. Based on this, the "Literature in Early Bronzes" does not stop at the interpretation of the inscription, but lets the text "speak", interpreting the inscription from multiple angles such as text, culture and calligraphy. There is no doubt that such an interpretation will allow readers to gain a more three-dimensional and comprehensive understanding of traditional culture.
Source: New Yellow River
Author: Qian Huanqing