Also known as Cang Xie, whose original surname was Hou, Jia and Hao Shi, he was the legendary historian of the Yellow Emperor and the creator of Chinese characters, and was honored as the ancestor of Chinese characters by later generations. However, it is generally believed that Cang Xie's creation of Chinese characters is only a legend, but he may be the organizer of Chinese characters.
Cang Xie was the assistant of the Yellow Emperor in the late primitive society of China. He once collected, sorted out and used the characters circulated among ancestors, which played an important role in the creation of Chinese characters and made immortal contributions to the reproduction and prosperity of the Chinese nation.
This prehistoric legend has never been mentioned in the ancient books of China before the Warring States Period. Cang Xie was first mentioned by Xun Qing during the Warring States Period. Followed by Lu's Chunqiu and Han Feizi, which are based on Xunzi's "so many people write good books, one person writes", and their main point is "writing books". After the Han Dynasty, in Huai Nan Zi and Lun Heng, it has developed from "Cangjie's creation of characters" to "Cang Xie's four eyes" and began to be deified. Especially in the Han Dynasty, Shu Wei further exaggerated Cang Xie's "being born literate, being recorded by the river, changing from time to time, looking up at the joy of the stars, overlooking the feathers of fish and birds, knowing the mountains and rivers, and coining words" (Spring and Autumn Life Bud). Later, it became more and more magical and developed into a legend that Cang Xie was "the historian of the Yellow Emperor". Huangdi was one of the leaders of tribal alliances in the late primitive society. At that time, there was no state machine. It can be seen that the theory of "historian" is obviously the result of later generations using the official name of the state machine for prehistoric legends.
According to the records of prehistoric cultural relics in China, 6000 or 7000 years ago, the characters have advanced from the brewing stage to the original field, such as the depiction symbols on painted pottery of Yangshao culture unearthed in Banpo, Xi 'an; New pottery symbols unearthed from Liuwan Racecourse Site in Qinghai: the early pictographic symbols of Dawenkou culture in Shandong are essentially different from the patterns on ordinary painted pottery. I have to say that this is the origin of China characters, or the legacy of China's original characters.
From the rudiment of Chinese characters to Oracle Bone Inscriptions, in fact, it is impossible for Cang Xie to accomplish such a difficult task of creating Chinese characters by himself. Xunzi, who first wrote about Cang Xie in the article, said: "So, there are many people who are good at reading, and Cang Xie's" The Biography of Oneself "is also one." "There are many good harvesters, and Hou Ji's independent communicator is also one" (Songgai). Xun Qing does not think that writing was created by Cang Xie alone, just as crops were not created by Hou Ji alone. Among many people who are engaged in writing, Cang Xie can concentrate on his work, make special contributions and obtain a "unique biography". However, in Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals and Han Feizi, we didn't say "there are many good writers", but only "wrote books", not one of them, but an original creator.
In Huai Nan Zi Lun Heng, it evolved into "Cang Xie Four Days" and was deified. In particular, Huainanzi Benjing is mainly based on Taoist thought, which is rather bizarre. The article said: "In the past, Cang Xie wrote a book, and it rained at night, and the ghosts cried and screamed." "Cang Xie regards writing bird tracks as a way to conclude a book contract, so fraud and forgery are born ..." Extreme words and characters are an earth-shattering event, which makes ghosts and gods restless. He believes that the wind of forgery is also caused by words, which is a copy of the Taoist thought of "governing by doing nothing" and the result of mixing Taoist thought with Cang Xie's legend of word creation.
Xu Shen (AD 58- 147) was a Confucian scholar and linguist in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and his position was very important. Drawing lessons from predecessors' achievements in ancient Chinese prose, Confucian classics, writing and exegetics, and taking Biography as the norm, it is the first dictionary in China, a treasure house of ancient Chinese vocabulary, and an important basis for future generations to study writing and exegetics. Xu Shen said: "The ancients respected the world as the king of the family. When they looked up, they looked at the images in the sky, and when they looked down, they looked at the laws in the ground ... It was easy to gossip. ..... Shennong tethered governance ... ""Cang Xie, the history of the Yellow Emperor, saw the traces of birds and animals' hooves and knew the difference between them. When he made a book contract, all his efforts were people-oriented. "(Preface to Explaining Words in Shuowen). In ancient times, it was credible to tie a rope and record it with gossip, but they were neither words nor the origin of words. Xu Shen's exposition on characterization affirmed the legend of "Cangjie creating characters" and the important role of Cang Xie. Investigate its source, its first-hand information, or from Xunzi.
In the past 22 years, Xu Shen has specially written Shuo Wen Jie Zi, which is a comprehensive study of ancient Chinese characters. He analyzed the structure of more than 9,000 Chinese characters, made a detailed analysis and explanation of the six books, and studied the original meaning and sound exegesis of the characters with the "six books". * * * Received 9353 Chinese characters, including 264 pictographs, 29 signifiers 129, and 7679 pictographs 1 167. And establish radicals for Chinese characters, ***540. Therefore, it is a great creation of this book that readers can trace the origin of word creation, distinguish the gradual changes of Li, Xing and Cao, and make painstaking arrangements. He is unique in the interpretation of word meaning, grasping the original meaning of words and solving some problems of exegetics. In addition to emphasizing literal interpretation, it also pays attention to description and narration. Become a masterpiece of philology. Imagine what the development and spread of the splendid culture of the Chinese nation would be like without Xu Shen's painstaking efforts to write this book. It is not hard to imagine that it will definitely fall behind for centuries. The development and importance of writing to human society, history and culture can be seen. ,
After the book Shuo Wen Jie Zi was written, it has been copied for hundreds of years and tampered with by Tang Liyang Bing, so that it was lost and violated the truth. In the third year of Song Yongxi (AD 9-06), Song Taizong ordered Xu Xuan (AD 9 16-99 1 year, a writer in the early Song Dynasty of the Five Dynasties) and others to revise Shuo Wen Jie Zi, which was completed in that year and sent to imperial academy for engraving before it was circulated in the world. This book is called Da Xu Ben. The word 19 is added to the text, and 402 words of Shuowen Xinfu are attached to the text, which are not found in the original text of Jiezi, from which we can learn about the new words produced after the Han Dynasty and before the Tang Dynasty. Xu Xuan carefully revised Shuo Wen Jie Zi, corrected its mistakes, not only kept its original appearance, but also made some innovations, making contributions to the study of ancient Chinese characters. His younger brother Xu Kai (920-974 AD) was also a philologist in the Five Dynasties and the Early Song Dynasty. He is proficient in linguistics. He revised Shuo Wen Jie Zi, clarified and supplemented the annotations of the original book, and wrote 40 volumes of Shuo Wen Jie Zi Series Biography. He noticed that Chinese characters are similar in form and sound, and the sound and meaning are changed. It is very novel, and this book is world-famous. Xiao Xu wrote a book about fonts, sounds and meanings? During the Kun Rebellion, the characters at that time and later generations were standardized, which made the fonts basically stable after the Tang Dynasty.
In the 450 years since Shuowen Jiezi, Pian Yu, written by Liang Daigu in the Southern Dynasties, has 30 volumes, 16, 9 17 characters, which is divided into 542 parts, rich in content and complete in exegesis.
In the study of philology in Ming Dynasty, the most outstanding achievements are Mei's Dictionary and Zhang Zilie's Zhengzitong. Fourteen volumes of vocabulary, with 33 179 words, divided into 2 14 parts; Twelve volumes of Zheng Zitong collected more than 33,000 words.
There are four famous scholars who studied Shuo Wen Jie Zi in Qing Dynasty: Duan Yucai (A.D. 1735- 18 15), Gui Fu (A.D. 1736- 1805) and Wang Yun (A.D. Duan Yucai's Annotation on Explaining Words is unique and influential. He collated Da Xu's edition, revised many contents, and made comments on Shuo Wen Jie Zi. Did a lot of elaboration, called shine on you. Especially for extended meaning and metonymy, it is insightful for polyphonic words and synonyms. Gui Fu's Shuowen Jiezi is rich in materials, which has a great influence on the research of Shuowen Jiezi in later generations. Wang Yun's research on Shuo Wen Jie Zi mainly lies in sorting out, and he has unique opinions in terms of glyphs and meanings, which has contributed to the popularization of philology. Zhu Zhu's Shuo Wen Tong Xun, based on the content of Shuo Wen Jie Zi, supplemented by examples, explains the relationship between form, sound and meaning of words from the perspective of glyphs. In the aspect of transliteration and borrowing of word meaning, it is pointed out that transliteration is extension and borrowing is homophonic, which opens up a new field of ci study and forms its own word; In the book, the characters are also classified according to the ancient rhyme, and the phonetic symbol is * * * 1 137, which is summarized as 18. The rhyme feet of the above ancient rhyme are used to prove the ancient sound. All rhyme feet are called "ancient rhyme" and the adjacent rhyme feet are called "transliteration". His outstanding insight lies in his understanding of extended meaning and borrowed meaning.
There are also people who have made achievements in studying Chinese characters, such as Jiang Yong, Dai Zhen, Qian Daxin and Wang Niansun in Qing Dynasty, Luo Zhenyu in modern times, Tang Lan and Guo Moruo in modern times. They laid the foundation of Chinese characters and developed them into science.
Kangxi Dictionary, compiled by Zhang Yushu and Chen Tingjing, is a masterpiece of calligraphy in Qing Dynasty, with 47,035 words, 1.955 ancient characters, totaling 48,990 words, divided into 2 1.4 parts.
The Dictionary of Modern Chinese edited by Xu Yuanhao and Ouyang Pucun has more than 48,000 words and is divided into 2 14 parts.
A Dictionary of Modern Chinese, compiled by more than 300 people including Xu Zhongshu, contains 56,000 ancient and modern words arranged by 200 radicals. This book is a masterpiece of ancient and modern dictionaries, and it is a dictionary model with the largest number of words and the richest information so far.
From the budding characters in Cang Xie era to about 56,000 contemporary Chinese characters, it has been 5,000 years, during which every step forward embodies the wisdom of the Chinese nation and the painstaking efforts of writers. If Cang Xie, the representative of the ancient ancestors, didn't collect, sort out and popularize it, the writers of later generations would surely trudge through a more difficult creative process. '
The creation of Chinese characters has a history of six or seven thousand years, counting from Yangshao culture in primitive society. So far, the oldest mature characters have been found in Oracle Bone Inscriptions. According to incomplete statistics, more than 5000 pieces of Oracle bones100000 have been unearthed so far. Xu Shen contains 9,353 Chinese characters, which has now grown to about 56,000. In the long history, this is an arduous and creative task. Can only Cang Xie or a few famous people in the past do it? Oracle Bone Inscriptions is a mature script. The so-called pictographs, general characters, phonetic characters, reference characters, annotation characters and excuses of the ancients are called "Six Books". Examples can be found in Oracle Bone Inscriptions. So before Shang Dynasty, what kind of characters were used in Xia Dynasty and Huangdi period? The history of immature Chinese characters is still a blank in the history of philology; It is not clear at present. A batch of Oracle Bone Inscriptions unearthed in Xi 'an from 1986 to 1987 belongs to the late primitive period of Longshan culture and is a breakthrough discovery in the history of ancient philology in China. With the deepening of archaeological work, the immature characters before mature Oracle Bone Inscriptions will be discovered and deciphered sooner or later. Therefore, it is only a matter of time before the theory of "Cang Jie Zao Zi" finally has an accurate answer.
Chinese characters are one of the most widely used languages in the world and one of the six languages used by the United Nations. They have made great contributions to the cultural exchange between China and the world. Today, with the prosperity of science, Chinese characters can be input into computers and widely used in libraries, telegraph offices, news agencies and editorial departments. Printing houses and individuals write, communicate, express and exchange ideas. Human civilization has turned a new page. Contemporary linguists will take the road of Cang Xie. On the one hand, they will face new scientific challenges, on the other hand, they will continue to explore the origin of writing creation. A long way to go!
That's probably it! !