From the Oracle Bones to the Mojikyo Fonts - A Brief History of Chinese Script.
Oracle Bones
The earliest Chinese writing dates back to around 1500 BC, during the late Shang Dynasty. At the time ‘China’ was little more than the central and north eastern areas of the modern country, occupying much of the area focused around modern Henan. Despite the scattered geography of the dynasty, many wonderful artefacts fashioned from a wide variety of materials such as bronze, jade, stone and ceramics shows the Shang to have been an incredibly adept and advanced culture.
Yet it is the oracle bones, containing the first Chinese script, that really put this era on the map. These were pieces of turtle or tortoise shell, or animal bone, which were inscribed with apparent divinations regarding society, class, production and other aspects of culture. So far over 150,000 oracle bones have been excavated, many of which originate from the then-Shang capital of Anyang, in modern Henan.
The story of the oracle bones’ discovery is almost as far-fetched as the divinations they profess to give. In 1899 a young scholar from Peking (modern Beijing), Wang Yirong, visited a pharmacist complaining of illness. As a remedy he was prescribed ‘dragon bones’, or the bones of dead animals. Before taking the medicine Yirong noticed some writing on the bones, and reported the lucky find to an archaeologist.
Anyang was then still largely an enigma, and the existence of the Shang Dynasty at all was very much in doubt. It took until a 1928 dig, after the oracle bones had been traced to the modern village of Xiaotun, that Anyang was to be taken from myth and into the history books. Today the ruins of Yin, also known as Yinxu, are a recognised UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the oldest and largest archaeological sites in China.
How and Why?
The bones are mostly tortoise shells and oxes' shoulder blades, though bones from other animals such as sheep, boar and deer were sometimes used. Even human skulls were inscribed, but these were generally used for record keeping rather than divination. The bones would be cleared of meat, and then cleaned ready for use. As well as scouring script on the bones, brushed writing incidentally proved the existence of the writing brush back to the Shang Dynasty.
The wording of many bones allows historians to study diplomatic relations of the time, as the giving of oracle bones was in fact an important diplomatic exercise in its own right – and their provenance was frequently recorded for official use. Records of weather, farming yields, festivals and prominent figures also play a large part in the bones’ use, meaning almost all spheres of Shang life can now be studied closely.
What's it all About?
So with tens of thousands of oracle bones found, what did the earliest inscriptions say about the time and culture in which they were made? Well, the surprising complexity of the language employed on the bones proved that by 1200 BC, the ancient Chinese had already developed a script very similar to modern Chinese languages. And though many of the oracle bone characters are yet to be deciphered, the crux of most inscriptions can easily be deduced. Most of the differences centre on the ancient text’s wavy structure, which favours ellipses and circles over the more angular modern scripts.
The next step for Chinese writing would be relayed via bronze, during the end of the Shang but also the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (ca. 1150 – 771 BC). However in almost a thousand years since the earliest script, the language had changed very little, and even the calligraphy was incredibly similar to that of the Shang. The next step in Chinese writing was the bamboo, or wooden tablet phase, which is often regarded as the classic era in the Chinese language. It was via these tablets that the most famous Chinese philosophies were noted, such as Laozi, Liji and Lunyu. And as the language filtered through an increasingly fluid Chinese culture, the ‘clerical’ form of the script emerged – which is easily recognisable even for today’s novices.
Where Next?
As the personal computer took over the world towards the end of the 20th century, it became increasingly difficult to catalogue the voraciously complex Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages in light of the simply Latin alphabet. Thus, the Mojikyo Font Centre was created. This Japanese-based word-processing software offers a working computer font set for all modern and obsolete alphabets from a number of East Asian countries in an easy-to-use format. Over 80,000 characters have been added, and all are available for free. Most include a map whereby users can see where each font was (or is) used.
The Mojikyo Font Centre is backed up by the International Dunhang Project - an international collaboration which aims to heighten the study of pre-eleventh century artefacts and manuscripts from the Silk Road. This has made the scholarship of defunct ancient languages much easier, and eastern scripts are increasingly emerging from the electronic shadows of their western counterparts.
The Chinese script may have changed little from its auspicious beginnings over 3,500 years ago, but its platform of publication has probably travelled more than any other. From brushed mutterings on human skulls to a massive database of useable characters, Chinese script has seen it all.
Images by WL. All rights reserved.
videos
Comments
The first museum dedicated to the gamut and history of sinograms, from their origins as Oracle Bones onwards, has just opened in Anyang City, Henan Province. As well as traditional Chinese fonts, the museum incorporates over 40 ethnic languages which have made impacts in China, such as Tibetan, Uyghur and Kazakh.
Post new comment